The Thirteenth Black Crusade
by Lovehammer Inc
Summary: Set within the main 'Lovehammer' universe, and written by Lord Khuzdul, by his request this archivist has given it its own space. Now reworked with longer chapters and new content, huzzah!
1. Part I

{oOo}

_THE CHRONICLES OF THE THIRTEENTH BLACK CRUSADE_

{oOo}

"And we shall show the faithless curs what true divinity provides us!" Lorgar finished at the pulpit in the greatest cathedral of Sicarius, among the cheers of countless traitor Marines belonging to the Word Bearers legion. As he stepped down, Kor Phaeron approached him.

"A fine sermon, as always." he said, holding a subservient pose in front of the Primarch-turned-Daemon Prince. "Our forces are ready. Abaddon will be gathering his Legion and the others will be arriving. Typhus will be the spearhead, and I made sure ours will be the legion that would perform the initial landings."

"Good." Lorgar answered. "Glory to us and ours. Only Imperial Guard holds the Cadian Gate. My father is a fool. Word Bearers would cleanse their filth off the planet, and then the path would be wide open for our forces to smash their way to the heart of the Imperium. Are the traitors in place?"

"Yes, my Lord. The Volscani regiments will begin their operation soon. When we get out of the Eye, what insignificant resistance Cadians might offer will be disorganized. This will be like taking candy from a baby."

Sadly, Kor Phaeron didn't know how vicious some babies could be.

{oOo}

Colonel Creed was the quintessential Cadian. A stocky, broad-shouldered man of middling height, his hair, black but already starting to show threads of silver on the temples, was in the buzz cut preferred by the military types for practicality in the entire Imperium of Man. His face was lined and craggy, like a weather-beaten rock face, and a rather large scar courtesy of a cultist's knife (the owner's payment was two las-blasts to the face) bisected his face, as much a defining characteristic as his sharp blue gaze and his ever-present, thick cigars.

One of the things that put him apart from other Imperial Guard officers, though, was his intense and personal dislike of impractical pomp and ceremony. He performed the dog and pony show well enough, but that did not lessen his intense loathing.

However, he preferred to express that dislike in private, to keep from offending any sensibilities. That meant the only one to suffer his temper was...

"Kell! Where in the name of the Warp are the placement orders? By the Emperor and the Princess, why do I have to go through this every time? As if anything changes..."

Colour Sergeant Jarran Kell, his aide, standard bearer and all-around troubleshooter, as the NCO's everywhere in the galaxy are.

"Here, sir. This time there are some changes, sir. The guest Volscani regiments are given the forward slots. We will be behind them, in our usual placement."

Creed grumbled. The thought of playing second fiddle to anyone, even in a simple parade, did not feel good. Cadian 8th was his pride and joy. His regiment. His boys. His family. That was a lot more literal than usual for Creed. Cadian 8th was the only family or home he knew, since he was rescued from the ruins of Kasr Gallen. He served the regiment as a platoon messenger, a Whiteshield, a Guardsman, and by clawing his way through the ranks one by one, an NCO, an officer and finally the colonel and undisputed master of his regiment, answerable only to Emperor and the Princess. His eyes found the plastiglass case that contained the regimental honours. Which included one bestowed upon them by the Princess herself. In his eyes, they were the Imperium's finest in every sense of the word.

But now, just out of a long battle against the Eldar, and their losses barely replenished, the tired regiment was recalled from their well-deserved R&R for some dog and pony show to "Welcome our Brothers, Volscani Cataphracts, who will stand shoulder to shoulder with us against the Imperium's Enemies on Cadia".

Bullshit. Utter, condescending and pointless bullshit.

Cadia did not need anyone other than her native sons and daughters for defence, and she definitely didn't need a bunch of jumped up PDF from across the Segmentum, who had no idea what was involved in defending the gateway into the Eye of Terror.

But the decision was not his, and now he had to endure having his regiment watch the backs of that bunch of rabble like a good proper officer of the Emperor.

He really hated Departmento Munitorum sometimes.

{oOo}

"Sir, look ahead, what the..."

This was the only warning Creed got as an explosion of sound rocked the Tyrok Fields, vast parade grounds of Kasr Derth, largest Kasr and the capital of Cadia. One moment before, Colonel Creed was watching the large stage in front of the Leviathan command vehicle where Governor Marus Porelska was accepting the salutes of the marching regiments, with a sense of detachment and boredom from the top of his Salamander command vehicle. This was what saved him, remaining with his men, as the assorted Colonels and generals, who wanted to curry favour, crowded behind the Governor and were cut down by the multi-lasers of Volscani Chimeras alongside him. Volscani regiments immediately broke ranks and started firing on the surrounding Cadians. Creed, more by reflex than any true thought, jumped down the hatch and pulled it shut just as the bullets of a Volscani autocannon passed over his head. He immediately reached for his vox.

"Sitrep!" He yelled, as he caught Jarran Kell jumping into the vehicle through a side hatch, along with the Commissar assigned to the 8th, Maximilian Aitken. His fingers immediately sought the dial and turned it to the frequency linking him to the comm station at the besieged Leviathan.

"Cursed traitors." Commissar Aitken swore through clenched teeth. "I saw them break out damned Chaos icons just before I came in. There is no mistake here, Creed. We are in the middle of a treacherous insurrection."

"Mighty fine timing they have." Creed answered, as he brought the receiver to his lips. "They probably got the entire High Command." He pressed the button. "Colonel Creed to Leviathan _Indomitable_, respond."

The only sound he heard was static for a few moments, then a cackling voice buzzed in the cramped vehicle. "You are doomed, Cadian dog. You will be our gifts to the Gods!"

Creed squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. Well, that was, as they say, that. "I believe we are on our own on that front, gentlemen." He muttered. "But I protected this planet for my entire life, and I'll be damned before I allow it to fall to treachery." He turned the dial to the command frequency that would allow him to speak to every vox unit in the field. He took a deep breath as he pressed the button.

"Sons and daughters of Cadia. This is Colonel Ursarkar E. Creed of the Cadian 8th. Our world has suffered an unforgivable treachery today. A treachery we cannot allow to go unpunished. I will be raising my standard. Everyone who can see it, form up alongside it. Everyone who can't, push towards the Command Leviathan. Do not let even one traitorous Volscani bastard escape. for Cadia, Emperor and Princess. Creed out!"

Releasing the button, he turned towards Kell, only to see him scrambling out of the top hatch, not even noticing the bullets buzzing around the vehicle. He smiled slightly. "Let's move out, Max. We have traitors to take care of."

{oOo}

The Colonel and the Commissar emerged from the silent interior of the vehicle to the hellish din of the battlefield. During the time they spent in the Salamander, Volscani heavy units managed to turn and unleash their weaponry on the surrounding Cadians. Just as Creed emerged, a Leman Russ battle tank to their left blew up, showering the surrounding area with shrapnel. They instinctively ducked behind the command transport, and were immediately covered by another Leman Russ moving up to shield them from the side. The commander of the tank immediately jumped down from the hatch, even as the tank turret turned to engage the Volscani.

"Lieutenant Hartow of the 11th Cadian Armoured, sir!" he saluted, coming to attention. He had a youthful face, typical of a Cadian who was raised as a soldier. Creed took in his features. The boy was barely eighteen. "I have lost half of my squadron, sir. But the remaining four tanks are moving up to cover this position. I have seen infantry from 8th, 9th and 16th gathering behind my tanks. I think we have some Sentinels forming up just ahead." A loud explosion interrupted him. "Sorry sir, they just got hit."

"Okay lieutenant, form up on this position. Prepare for a defensive action for the moment." Creed cursed under his breath as he pulled a map out of the Salamander, showing him the parade deployment, as the young tank commander leapt onto his tank. "Damn. The mass of Volscani regiments are not here. They are moving up from the south and east. Six Leviathans, super heavy companies. The whole nine yards, and we are here, bottled against the main wall of the Kasr, between the Command Leviathan and the three Volscani regiments around it, and the traitors on the outside." Another explosion rocked the field. "And we are being shot to shit and back." Irritably, he pulled a cigar from his uniform pocket. Commissar Aitken offered him a lighter.

{oOo}

A minute later, they were sitting on folding chairs next to the Salamander among clouds of cigar smoke, as more and more tanks formed around them. Jarran Kell, along with another trooper, unloaded a table and the Vox unit from the command vehicle. Creed examined the deployment map and noted the reports coming from units on the perimeter. They were joined by two more officers, one Lieutenant Colonel Montgomery from the Cadian 11th Armoured, a short, somewhat phlegmatic individual with sharp, alert black eyes and one Major Harris from Cadian 9th, a tall, gangly youth who probably had more scars on his body than seasons in his life. Creed started up by offering a situation report.

"We are between the hammer and the anvil, so to speak. Thank the Emperor the Command Leviathan's Void Shields and Macro Cannon are still offline, but we are being crushed towards it, and its Battle Cannons are already starting to take a toll." Creed explained with a puff of his cigar. "We have 16 regiments, but we lost most of their command staff. It seems the junior officers have cobbled together some sort of command, and they are ready to receive orders." He pointed towards their own position. "We are here. As you can see, thanks to Lieutenant Hartow's quick thinking, we have a strongpoint, and more tanks are forming on us. We have 20 Leman Russ already in position, with more on the way. The problem is the force of six Volscani Leviathans behind us. They are loudly broadcasting a fabricated recording with enough power to shut down all our comm units to the outside. So we are on our own. Unless we get to the nearest thing powerful enough to cut through them, and hit them hard enough to hurt." He puffed on his cigar, then pointed towards a cluster of icons between them and the stage. "One of the traitor regiments is concentrated here. they have noticed us and are preparing to overrun us. Luckily, our short range Vox casters still work. Gentlemen, I have a plan." He tossed the butt of his cigar aside, and pulled another one. Never missing a movement of his commander, Jarran Kell offered him a lighter.

{oOo}

Later chronicles of the Imperium would talk about the glorious charge of the Cadian 8th through the traitor regiments to rescue the body of the former Planetary Governor from desecration, with their gallant Colonel at their head, smashing the traitors under their heels.

As usual, their version is far from the truth.

The truth, well, it was far dirtier, far bloodier, and far, far more practical than that.

The truth is, Creed did not give a rat's ass about the corpse of a stuffy fool, and his charge was just a feint, a feint to allow the tanks under Lieutenant Colonel Montgomery to outflank the enemy under the cover of the smoke clouds rising from broken, shattered vehicles littering the once pristine parade field.

The truth is, the Volscani were hardly the cowards the Imperial historians painted them as. They were cocksure, full of themselves, and whipped into a blood frenzy by the proximity of the Dark Gods they worshipped. But they were not cowards.

They fought like the possessed devils they were.

The Imperial histories did not talk about the casualties suffered. But they were numerous, on both sides. They talk about the Heroes, like Creed, Montgomery, Kell, like Lieutenant Gideon, whose tank struck the Volscani command vehicle and broke the back of their resistance, like Sergeant Calgary, who, along with five troopers, rushed up the stairs of the stage and in a blaze of lasgun fire and grenades, tore the foul cultists preparing to desecrate the bodies of the Cadia's fallen.

They forget to mention those like Lieutenant Hartow, whose quick thinking and cool head helped the only remaining command to survive, and whose initiative secured the core of the forces Creed used to take action. And whose promising career was cut short by the burst of a krak missile fired by a Volscani Sentinel, which laid open the turret of his tank, and his all too frail human body like a gutted fish. They forget the crew of the Cadian Command Leviathan _Indomitable_, who fought to the last, with no hope in sight, to deny the crucial systems of the war behemoth to the traitorous enemy, like Captain Horatio Bates holding the battle bridge for three hours with only a handful of command aides and Whiteshield guards against the heavily armed Volscani, only to be murdered just minutes before the forces, led by Major Harris burst in behind the traitors to retake the beast, or the young Whiteshield Technical Sergeant Trellis, who flooded the shield generator station with radiation while he was inside.

Nor do they talk about the countless who died while Lieutenant Colonel Montgomery all too carefully moved, throwing themselves into the guns of a vicious enemy.

Yet, in one thing they were truthful. Even if they understated the vicious three hours, in the end, Creed's forces did smash through the Volscani lines that broke apart under the withering, enfilading barrage of the outflanking Leman Russ and Baneblade tanks, and through another bloody half hour in the bowels of the massive Leviathan, finally the regimental standard of the Cadian 8th rose from the fortified upper balcony of the Leviathan's battle bridge and the battlecannons lining the sides of the massive warbeast tore into the unprotected backs of the traitors surrounding it as the Chaos icon raised over it fell to the ground. Within minutes, Cadian technicians deciphered the code left to them by the ingenious Sergeant Trellis, (an easy task for a true son of Cadia. For they know what they did best. They died standing.) Void Shields snapped into place, finally shielding the surrounded regiments that flocked to her sides from the withering fire of her six traitorous sisters.

And in the end of that bloody, frantic time, Colonel Creed finally took his seat at the head of the conference table at the War Room of the Leviathan, with his cigar between his clenched teeth. The show was not yet over.

{oOo}

Creed stood behind the Comm technician of the Leviathan, scowling.

"Their broadcasts are too strong, sir." The young man sitting at the console explained. "We are fighting six to one here. We can only get bits and pieces out, even at full power."

Creed scratched his chin as he considered the explanation. "Bits and pieces, you say. How small are these 'bits and pieces'?"

"Certainly no more than a few bytes of data in every burst, sir." The technician answered. "There is no way any man can make heads or tails of any message we try to transmit."

"Hmm." Creed considered the communications console for a couple of seconds. "No man." He murmured, then his expression turned into determination of a man with a plan. He turned to a computer terminal and started typing furiously for a couple of seconds. He pulled out the result to a dataslate and handed it to the technician.

The technician's brow furrowed as he perused the binary output in his hands. Creed patted his shoulder reassuringly. "Push this out byte by byte, with all the power you can spare. The intended recipient would get it." He said, his voice with the bite of authority. The technician nodded, training kicking in. Creed, satisfied, turned on his heel and walked out of the Comms station, followed by Kell and Maximilian Aitken. The technician, now completely focused, got to work.

{oOo}

Creed watched the vanguard slowly form under the cover of the slowly fluctuating Void Shields. The super-heavies were the lead, the tip of his spear. Three Shadowswords, oversized Volcano cannons pointing towards the enemy like accusing fingers, were the first line, spaced to prevent the oversized shells of Macro Cannons mounted on the Volscani Leviathans from injuring more than one tank. They were flanked by Baneblades and Stormlords as support. The three strong Stormblade detachment that belonged to the 114th Heavy Company of the 11th Armoured was the reserve, towering alongside the Leman Russ and Malcador tanks that formed the main body of the tank vanguard.

His chrono displayed the numbers 1300. They needed more time. And he would buy that time with blood.

He hated himself for that.

His eyes travelled over the ranks of infantry forming behind the tank vanguard, and finally left them to focus on the shapes up ahead: The Leviathans and Basilisks that belonged to the Volscani, that kept a constant weight of fire on his stretched and overtaxed shields. He probably burned out the shield generators of the Leviathan by doing this, but he bought two hours without paying with lives.

And now, he had to pay the change with the men and women of the Imperial Guard, sons and daughters of Cadia. Home.

He would make sure the Volscani bastards would pay for that.

{oOo}

In the lead Shadowsword, the crew hurried to complete the mission preparations. Power cells, fuel and ammunition was loaded, alongside anything the crew would need during battle.

The tank commander, one Captain Sharon Vale busied herself with her own preparations... most of which involved putting small containers of caffeinated fizzy drinks in convenient holders around the command station in the main turret. Sharon was rather well known among the soldiers of the Cadian 3rd Armoured, for three things: Her love for fizzy drinks, her... upbeat attitude (or rather "chipmunk on crack personality" according to more than one exasperated officer or Commissar), and her utter and complete devotion to the ephemeral ideal of some kind called "Dakka". No one was entirely sure what the word meant, but they knew Sharon heard it from an Ork "Loota" that tried to take over her tank in some past battle, just before shooting the creature's head off with a laspistol. The word had something to do with weaponry that made a lot of noise and big explosions, and was the source of Sharon's boundless (and sometimes bordering on creepy) love for the Imperial Guard Shadowsword tank "Blade of Fury" also known as "Sharon's Boomstick" among the troopers. The irony of an excitable slip of a girl with the top of her fiery hair just reaching past 5 feet commanding one of the biggest phallic symbols in the Imperium's arsenal was not lost on anyone, but nobody dared to come between Sharon and her "sweetheart", and Blade of Fury was one of the most reliable and decorated tanks of the company, with many battle honours and kill marks lining the glacis plate and armoured skirts, among them a Gargant. So, nobody cared about it.

When she slid the last of the cans in place, Sharon opened the hatch under her feet and yelled down.

"How's my boy doing, Lester?"

"Purring like a tiger." The distant answer came from the driver, Lester Artorios. The reedy, rather flamboyant Sergeant was in the guts of the tank alongside the engineer, Sergeant Fred "Frets" Jett, making sure nothing would go wrong with the engine during battle. Sharon dropped the hatch with a satisfying clang.

As she leaned back, the hatch to her side opened and the wide, thick frame of her head gunner, Sergeant Gerard "Guns" Steel slid through it, taking his seat at the gunnery station. He started flipping various switches, and the screens around him came to life, displaying the status of the lascannons and heavy bolters in the sponsons and hull mounts around the tank. He sat back with a satisfied look on his face.

"We're good to go, skip." He reported after a cursory glance over the screens to make sure. "All guns are locked, loaded and ready to rock."

"Roger that." Sharon said, patting the console in front of her with sincere affection. "Okay, sweetheart, time to go. We got work to do. Lester!" She called into her microphone. "Take us out, combat speed, at my signal." She looked back, and her comm specialist, Lance Corporal Herrings held up three fingers. He counted down, two, then one.

"We have a go, Lester. May the Emperor have mercy on the poor bastards, for I will not."

The immense tank rumbled like a caged beast, then the titanic tracks clanged and the massive hunk of armour and machinery moved forwards, churning the earth under the steel treads.

Void shields fizzled in front of them, and as they passed them, they failed, and a storm of fire whipped into the armoured formation. Among the patters of bullets and shells that sounded like gentle rain on a roof in the tank, Captain Vale grinned.

"It is a good day for some other poor bastard to die! Onward!"

{oOo}

Cadian battle line faced the storm of Volscani fire resolutely, without faltering, as the tanks at the front pushed towards the heart of Volscani lines towards the Leviathans towering above the battlefield. As the outer Void Shields fell and exposed the regiments sheltering under them, the inner shield cover parted, and the retaken Command Leviathan Indomitable announced her entrance by the tremendous bellow of her own Macro Cannon. The tank-sized shell tore a gaping hole in the front lines of the Volscani horde, and the tip of the armoured spear lunged towards that hole, guns blazing. The battle was joined.

{oOo}

Blade of Fury was surrounded by a fusillade of explosions as they rode towards the Leviathan contingent, their ultimate target. Sharon's eyes switched between various displays and her fingers danced an impossibly fast tattoo over the buttons of her consoles, rapidly relaying orders and coordinating attention of the ten-strong tank crew expertly, her orders sharp and impossibly rapid.

"Frick, Russ at three. Yuna, infantry squad at four, under the Chimera. Tass, hit that mutant next to the Cyclops. Ralph, Cyclops ahead. Lester, fifteen right, two-thirds. Frick, two low, Chimera in the crater. Yuna, stand by to Ralph, Russ targeting at ten. Nors, tank crew and infantry behind that..."

To her side, Guns danced his own version, turning the auxiliary weapons of the tank to and fore in furious activity, monitoring energy and ammunition levels, muzzle temperature and mechanism conditions, and keeping the guns going as they cut a withering swathe through any enemy foolish enough to stand in the way of the death machine.

Sharon's eyes caught a worthwhile target in the forward gun camera as the lascannons on the sponsons tore open a Leman Russ charging them. "Guns, Baneblade eleven o'clock!" She called, then hit the button that connected her to the driver compartment. "Lester, stop, we're firing."

The clanging of the treads stopped as a heaving shudder brought the tank to a stop, and the engine gave a complaining whine as the drive shaft connected to the massive generator that powered the tank's massive weapon.

The Volscani Baneblade noticed the attention of the Shadowsword on itself, and turned on its treads towards the gun in an attempt to expose the most powerful plates of armour to the incoming beam. The turret and sponson armaments followed, a sizzling burst from the side-mounted lascannons ineffectually glancing off the glacis plate in a desperate attempt to destroy the weapon the opposing crew knew meant doom for them.

Then, the din of the battlefield stopped for one heartbeat as the massive capacitors pushed the power equivalent of a small sun into the emitter. Within picoseconds, a beam designed to slash off armoured Titan limbs burst out of the barrel, steam bursting out of the heat sinks as they struggled to prevent the barrel from melting.

A line of white light connected Sharon's tank with the unfortunate Baneblade for a fraction of a second as the air itself combusted on the path of the laser beam and burned with the temperature of a sun's surface. Then, a great boom sounded as the heated air displaced when the beam cut off, out of power.

On the other end of the beam, the results were disastrous. In the small time the beam impacted it, the faceplate, starship-grade ceramite, nearly a foot thick, more powerful than a dozen Terminator chest plates put on top of one another, designed to stop the most powerful weaponry known to man, boiled off in a great explosion of iridescent, white hot gas. The beam continued onward, completely vaporising the crew compartment and the unlucky crew of the Baneblade only to strike the armoury and the fuel stores. The crew, fortunately, were spared the destruction of their tank, as the massive vehicle erupted in a shower of glowing steel fragments and a massive gout of flame that smashed apart lesser tanks surrounding the titanic warmachine and destroyed the infantry platoon sheltering under its shadow.

As half-burned, wounded and dazed shapes dashed away from the dead giant to escape its lingering death throes, Sharon's cold voice whipped in the Shadowsword's crew compartment. "Yuna, Tass, Nors, kill them."

Three heavy bolters barked as one, and large, rocket propelled explosive munitions spewed by three barrels cut down the survivors of the Baneblade mercilessly. Then, with a great shudder, Shadowsword moved and trailed towards the next target.

{oOo}

_When elephants have a go at each other, it is the grass that suffers._

That old saying was certainly true as it pertained to infantry in a scuffle of armoured giants. And slate grey uniforms of Volscani Cataphracts and olive drab and tan of Cadians littering the battlefield between burning ceramite and armorplast behemoths proved it.

Sergeant Marcus Cole dashed from a piece of cover (the burned out husk of a Leman Russ, too darkened with soot to discern which side it belonged to, and smelling like hot steel and burning meat, a smell that strangely enough reminded Marcus of breakfasts at home in Kasr Gerren) to another, an overturned and half-crushed Chimera, his squad following him. Ahead of them, under the clouds of black smoke rising from dead tanks, the slugging match between the Cadian armoured regiments and Volscani tanks went on without respite, flashes of lascannon fire and explosions lighting up the battlefield darkened by smoke and the long shadows of Volscani Leviathan command vehicles, their targets.

The squad that tailed him definitely looked ragged, but that was more due to circumstance than choice. The ten member squad from Cadian 8th Infantry regiment, 3rd Company, 31st Platoon was a unit of veterans, and a unit that certainly proved the old Murphy's Law wrong about inspection ready units being unable to handle warfare. They were the pride of their sergeant usually, but at this moment, on this battlefield, the unit looked far from inspection ready.

Their assigned Chimera was hit in the beginning salvoes of the battle. They were luckier than most, at least luckier than Squad Thorn, whose Chimera ate a Vanquisher shell and blew up, leaving naught but a crater and scattered body parts, as the lascannon hit smashed the cockpit and vaporised the pilot, but they survived it and the following explosion of the hull mounted heavy bolter's ammunition stores cooking off.

Well, most of them anyway. Corporal Helder and Guardswoman Fullen were sitting on top of the ammunition store.

The unit was suffering from a multitude of cuts, scrapes and burns and all of them were covered in soot and blood thanks to the gout of flame followed by the pulverized remains of their friends that showered the compartment. Marcus felt a flash of pride. He knew squads that broke and ran for much less. Not Squad Cole. They set their jaws, gritted their teeth, and swore vengeance.

Then, they kicked out the side hatches, and pressed on.

At the moment, the currently eight man squad was hunting Volscani skirmishers in the wasteland left behind by the passing tanks. The uneven ground churned by treads, shell craters and armoured corpses were a perfect battleground for firefights, and the Volscani skirmisher squads, trying to get Melta and plasma shots at the lightly armoured rears of Cadian tanks and Cadians, trying to deny them the opportunity, were using it to the best of their ability. The Volscani were in a desperate position, with the Cadian armour between them and the bulk of their forces, and Cadian foot infantry pressing towards them in even greater number to close the gap between them and the tanks the rapid push of the armoured and mechanised regiments left, and they were fighting like Daemons fresh out of the Eye. But Cadians gave as good as they got; that was especially true for the veteran squads littering the field, climbing out of Chimeras left dead and immobilized by various reasons.

And they had one more advantage. While Volscani artillery was busy dealing with the tanks that stared them in the face, Cadian guns were safe in the shadow of the Leviathan, and if there was one truth in the life of an Imperial Guardsman, it was this:

_You are never out of the range of a Basilisk._

Though the Volscani suffered due to the addendum:

_Hope it is one of yours._

"Bella, c'mere!" As the Amazonian guardswoman carrying the heavy voxcaster approached, Marcus poked his head out of cover to scout out the sizeable Volscani group huddling around the gutted corpse of a Baneblade. The super-heavy looked like it got into a disagreement with a platoon of Leman Russ Vanquishers, and lost badly if the numerous holes wide enough for a man to crawl through on the side armour were any indication. They both ducked as a titanic explosion that came from the frontlines shook the battlefield. "Hope it was not one of ours." Marcus muttered, then held out his hand. Guardswoman Isabelle Gordon, without missing a beat, slapped the receiver into it. Without even glancing towards her, Marcus pulled the device towards him. "Artillery command this is Sergeant Cole, Cadian 8, 3, 31, squad 10, Alpha, Alpha, zero six one. I have a large group of traitors under cover, and I would appreciate some incendiaries to warm them."

"_Fire mission ready in thirty seconds, Sergeant. Transmit the coordinates._"

Marcus quickly rattled out the numbers. The entire planet of Cadia was mapped with an artillery grid just in case, centred on the titan guns that crowned Kasr Drachen, the former capital, and the troops were thankful as it provided them with an easy way to direct the strikes even in an impromptu battlefield like this.

"_Coordinates recorded, your gift package is on its way, Sergeant. Good luck out there. Artillery out._"

"Thanks Arty. Owe you a beer. See you later, over." Marcus replied, and clicked off.

Just like a well run train, the shrieks of artillery shells arrived just in time. The Volscani platoon, thirty men in all, only had time to look up in fear as the shells zeroed in on them. Dull thuds were heard as the incendiary shells burst overhead, then superheated promethium rained down like the wrath of an angry god. In seconds, the former Baneblade became the heart of an inferno. Marcus ans Squad Cole watched in vindication as the Volscani troopers shrieked, then fell silent, one by one, as the flames devoured their bodies, superheated air charring their lungs to a crisp, flesh curling upon itself as it was charred from bone, eyes bursting and flowing down faces in flames, and hair burning up. A horrible smell of burned flesh rose from the corpses.

"Mmm, smells like traitorous bacon." Marcus quipped as he turned back to his squad. "Okay guys and girls, let's move up and get some traitors for ourselves. I don't like arty having all the fun."

Squad Cole gathered and darted towards another burned out hulk. There were traitors to be killed.

{oOo}

_Sharon's Boomstick_ drove over the remnants of a Volscani Chimera, crushing it like Sharon herself crushed one of her drink cans in her surprisingly strong fist, pushing without pause towards the Leviathans. All around them, death happened. They were flanked by twin Baneblades, _Left Hand of the Angry One_ and _Right Hand of the Angry One_, the other two tanks of their company. Their commanders, Lieutenants Jester and Hobbs, were best friends, and despite the six year age difference between them, could have passed for twins. The duty of the Twins was doing everything, up to and including sacrificing themselves, to protect the precious and rare Shadowsword. And they were performing admirably, as the "Eleven Barrels of Death" as the Baneblade tanks are nicknamed cut a swath through the enemy armoured formations of lesser tanks, so Sharon can target the bruisers. They were accompanied by Chimeras and Leman Russ tanks, with infantry hanging all over them, to protect them from the small fry and the infantry. It looked like some sort of improvised royal escort accompanying one of the Imperial bigwigs, and Sharon felt like a princess in the middle of the formation.

A princess with one huge universal sign of "You're Fucked" directed towards the enemy.

Her tank, alongside countless smaller vehicles, scored two more super-heavies alongside the Baneblade they first vaporised. One was a Stormblade. It had fired first, but the panicked Plasma Blastgun charge went wide and struck a Leman Russ, vaporising the poor tank, and Sharon's answering shot sliced open the front of the huge tank, cooking the crew alive and wrecking the vehicle. The second was a Gorgon full of infantry. It wasn't pretty. The lance of laser penetrated the front armour of the massive vehicle, and a gout of flame from incinerated human bodies blasted out of the open top, showering the surrounding area and units with bits of overcooked human flesh.

Currently, her escorts, along with her gunners, were happily dismantling a mechanised infantry company, as her eyes sought any targets worthy of the divine attention of her main gun. She popped open another can just as her eyes caught one.

"Guns, Stormsword at ten." She noted, then clicked her comm button. "Hobbs, this is Vale. I see Basilisks behind that bruiser at ten. I'll be taking care of it, hit them when I blast it, over."

"_Understood Cap'n._" Came the answer from the Baneblade. The super-heavy ground his treads as the big guns turned towards their new targets.

Lester dutifully stopped the vehicle as the Volcano cannon oriented itself towards the massive artillery tank. The enemy was firing towards a group of Chimeras charging towards the line. The flag flying on the vox antenna marked it as a command tank.

Stupid officer.

The Volcano cannon fired, a blinding flash throwing the death and destruction of the darkened battlefield into a sharp contrast.

Dead officer.

As the Shadowsword turned away from its burning foe, the _Left Hand of the Angry One_pushed forward, the main guns opening fire in a withering barrage. The Basilisks sheltering behind the enemy started going off like firecrackers. His fire was soon joined by the guns of the Leman Russ squadron accompanying him, and within a minute, the Basilisk squadron was broken, the remaining vehicles pushing their engines to the redline in a mad scramble to get under the guard of the Leviathans.

Another happy ending. Sharon giggled lightly, before turning her attention back to the firefight developing to her left. She hoped to get a shot at the Leviathans soon.

{oOo}

Fuck.

Fuckity fuck.

Squad Cole was pinned beneath a smashed Salamander by the withering crossfire of two autoguns. Ambushers ambushed, as they were trying to catch a Volscani squad from the side, but the enemy sergeant was cannier than Marcus gave him credit for.

Now they were holed in the armoured husk as the bullets rattled off the metal and threw small plumes of earth up into the air. Corporal Uther was wounded a bullet grazing his leg and the large calibre weapon opening a large furrow in the flesh of his thigh, but they managed to pull the tall, Melta-toting brute into the tank husk before he was shredded by the fusillade of fire. He was lucky, as a direct hit from the heavy weapon probably would have taken his leg off. As it is, he whined softly as Corporal Dane, the squad medic, tried to staunch the bleeding and wrap up the wound. Cole hefted his discarded Melta, and gazed out of the holes in the armour, trying to spot their attackers. He hoped they were close enough to eat a full powered Melta shot to the face, but no one was in sight, and he was forced to duck as a burst of laser fire from the side splashed on the armour next to his face, charring his nose hairs.

To reiterate our original point. Fuck.

Next to him, Corporal Jenny Smiles, a stern, no nonsense woman in her mid-forties at odds with her name hefted her grenade launcher. "Anyone in sight, sergeant?" She asked.

"Someone to the left, they see us enough to fire a lasgun at me when they noticed my face in that hole. Lemme try that one." He pointed towards another hole behind and above her, looking towards the front of the tank. It was wider, and probably the entry wound of the lascannon shot that murdered the Salamander. Smiles shifted to the side to give him some space, and he quickly moved to the hole, bent in two. He cautiously peeked through the gaping wound.

"All right, I see the bastards. Smiles, c'mere. Load up a frag grenade. Four of them, just behind that slab of metal. Can you angle it so it explodes behind the cover?"

Jenny peeked up, then nodded. "Tricky shot, but I can do it, sergeant."

"Then do it. I'll be up there. Maybe I can spot those damn gunners so we can move off."

Marcus stood up, his head barely clearing the overhead hatch to risk a 360 degree look. Immediately a burst of fire sparkled all around him, but he got what he came for: an eyeful of two slate grey uniforms, manning the thin, long shape of an autocannon in a shell crater. They were partially shielded by the protruding glacis plate of a dead Leman Russ, but they were within grenade launcher range. He ducked down and called for the second grenade launcher carrier of his squad. "Arthur, up here."

Corporal Arthur Quinn, a young, sandy blonde haired man, picked his way carefully through the debris littering the floor and his squadmates laying prone among them,moving up to the sergeant.

"Carefully peek through the upper hatch. Autogun at nine o'clock." Arthur stood up, lifting his eyes over the rim of the hatch. He immediately ducked back as bullets showered the area. "Can you see them?"

"Yes, sergeant."

"Okay. Can you roll a grenade down their throats from the hatch?"

"Sure can do, sergeant." Arthur answered confidently.

Marcus nodded. He guessed as much. "Okay, wait for Jenny to fire. Then pop one over to them." He then turned towards the rest of the squad. "When the grenades go off, we push off towards the Chimera to the side. When we get there, we will have the other autogun in sight. Then we'll let the bastards have it."

The squad pushed themselves upright and gathered at the rear hatch of the Salamander. The grenade launchers, their thick barrels pushed out of the openings, waited for the sergeant's mark.

"Fire!" Marcus barked. Twin muffled thumps announced 40 mm frag grenades sailing out of the large drum magazines. Two heads moved to the holes to watch the effects.

Two explosions, followed by shrill screams as the shrapnel from the grenades tore open barely-armored bodies, followed. Marcus immediately yelled. "Go, go, go!"

The eight man squad, one member hung between two of his friends, darted from the Salamander to an immobilized Chimera ten yards to their left and behind. To their relief, no sound came from the autogun they targeted, which was covering this side of the Salamander. The other immediately rattled a response, but the bulk of the dead command vehicle sheltered the squad as they dove through the Chimera's side hatches.

A moment later, Marcus heard a jubilant "Fuck yeah!" from Guardsman Flint, who climbed into the gunner's seat. He pushed his way towards him.

"What's it, Flint?"

"Sir, you're gonna love this. The automated multi-laser on this junk is still working, and we have enough juice for ten or so shots in the capacitors."

A feral grin stretched the grizzled sergeant's lips. "Heh, fuck yeah indeed."

{oOo}

Creed watched the battle status display as his units moved up through the Volscani lines. The Volscani forces surrounded his and had six Leviathans to his one, putting him in an utterly untenable position, but it seemed things were working out. After his first shot opening up the hole to move through, the Macro Cannon on the Leviathan got to work keeping the attention of the Volscani beasts on itself. So far, the inner Void Shields and the armour handled the tank sized shells well, and the firing speed and discipline of the Volscani were far below his well-trained and led gunner crews, to the tune of one shell every five to ten minutes to his one shell every two minutes. They were probably using slaves or servitors to manually load the huge shells. He sent a small thanks to the Princess for nipping that idea in the bud when some rocks-for-brains Navy Admiral suggested it and coming down on the idiot like the wrath of an angry god. While the manpower pool of the Imperium boundless, and actually training people expensive and time consuming, trained, experienced and motivated crews made for a better, more efficient war machine... and it was easier on a commander's conscience. And everyone but some newly raised regiments like the Volscani understood that (and understood it that if you did it and got caught, well, you might survive the wrath of the Princess, but not the wrath of Lord Horus. Well, it was probably a moot point for the Volscani anyway. Creed would make sure they wouldn't survive _his _wrath.) and refrained.

His troops were holding the line to the sides, while pushing through at the centre with a spearhead centred around a detachment of super-heavies. And they were keeping the attention of the entire Volscani force firmly on themselves.

Just as planned. Creed grinned. The bastards wouldn't know what hit 'em.

To the side, tiredly sitting in a chair, Maximilian Aitken frowned warily upon seeing the vicious grin on the colonel's face. That grin only appeared when Creed was truly planning to ruin somebody's day. And with Creed, it was always some incredibly simple, incredibly unexpected plan.

Then he thought back to the message Creed handed to the comm technician. It was in Binary. The language of the machines and the code of Adeptus Mechanicus. Who could be the intended recipient that can...

An exasperated sigh escaped Aitken, prompting an amused glance his way from the Colonel. "Figured it out, huh?" Creed said, still sporting that infuriating grin.

Commissar Aitken shook his head with a smile. "Only you, Creed. Though I really want to see the face of that Volscani general when he realizes the trap he is in."

"I bet he would be cursing my name to the high heavens." Creed agreed, then pulled out a cigar, patting his pockets.

Aitken, chuckling, pulled out a lighter and handed it to him.

{oOo}

"Eenie-meenie-minnie-mo! I choose you!" Guardsman Peter Flint sung to himself as he leaned over the targeting console of the Chimera. He was using the targeting camera of the multi-laser to mark the targets on the other side of the squad's former cover. The second autocannon, set up in a furrow left behind by a large shell plunging into the ground, probably from a super-heavy, was easily visible thanks to the elevated vantage point of the camera, along with the squad of Volscani sheltering next to it in the handily provided knee-deep trench. Next to him, Sergeant Cole thumped the back of his helmet.

"Focus, Flint. Can you get them?"

"Yep, Sarge, most of them. But I am not sure about the gunner. The gun shield covers him." Marcus scratched his short, scruffy goatee.

"Maybe we can snipe the fucker. Keller!"

The squad marksman appeared in the door to the cockpit. "Dane's done raiding the medpack here, Sergeant. It was intact, unlike ours. He found some quick-heal patches. He can probably get Uther mobile in ten or so minutes." He informed the sergeant as he moved in.

"Good to hear." Marcus answered. "Tell that big lug to get on his feet. I am tired of lugging his big ass gun all over the place. That pilot is lucky he's dust, or I would have killed him myself for storing the medpack right next to the ammo." He shook his head, then pulled the guardsman next to him. "Look here. Flint says he can get all of them, but the gunner is trouble. Can you move up the line a bit without getting your ass shot up and put a las blast through his head?"

Keller noted the position of the gunner in the trench, then checked the field from the armoured side viewport of the Chimera. "There is a couple dead Lemans between us and that autogun Arthur blew up. I can probably move up, but if there is anyone alive there I can't promise not getting shot up, Sergeant."

Marcus nodded. "Okay, then we'll make it a group excursion. Tell Bella in there to drop the vox and pick up that great big knife she got from that Catachan chick. I'll be back there in a moment." Keller snapped a salute and moved back into the troop compartment. Marcus bent down over Flint's shoulder again to check the gun camera. "Right. When we move off, I'll thump the side of the 'Mera. Wait for my signal, then count to ten and let'em have it. Cut down as many as you can and get the rest to keep their heads down. I'll have Arthur and Jenny lob a few grenades over, and Keller will snipe anyone that survives."

"Will do, Sergeant." Flint answered, his eyes never leaving the screen.

Marcus thumped Flint's helmet again, and moved out.

{oOo}

Sharon wiped a tear away as she pushed her tank forward, moving between burning hulks to prevent a target lock and achieve one herself.

The bolt had came out of the blue, and it was a sobering thought in this battle where they have been feeling quite invincible so far. Another Shadowsword, a Volscani one, managed to hide between smoke clouds and struck the side armour of the _Right Hand of the Angry One_completely out of the blue. The bolt blew apart the turret of the massive tank, and a storm of fire followed, shredding the Leman Russ squadron clustered around the Baneblade. Hobbs, just as he was answering some question from Sharon, noticed what happened and an anguished sob escaped him just before he mercilessly squished his grief under professionalism. Sharon immediately moved her tank behind the burning hulk of her squadmate, and turned the glacis plate towards the direction the shot came from.

Now the two murderous super-heavies were dancing around the burning wreckage to catch a glimpse of their enemy. The Volscani had already fired once again, but the shot was a second too late as Sharon moved back just in time when she noticed the barrel tracking her, and it blew up the forward right track housing of the dead Baneblade. Sharon, knowing that her foe cannot fire for several seconds as the heat sinks cooled enough to handle the heat from a second shot without blowing up, boldly moved forward. But her enemy was canny. Even though his Volcano was out of commission, his sponson mounted lascannons were not, and twin lances of bright light burst out of the smoke clouds. The lascannons were not targeting her well-armoured turret or glacis plate. A scream sounded through the in-vehicle comm, and cut off abruptly as the twin lascannon bolts speared through the lascannon turret on top of the right sponson, and sheared through the body of the gunner sitting there. An explosion burst apart the turret, leaving behind a gaping hole and the lower half of the gunner's body, still smoking in the seat.

But the enemy was caught in his own cleverness. For Sharon's experienced eyes tracked the trajectory of the las bolts immediately. She knew the enemy was right in the middle of those two lines of light.

Her finger stabbed the firing button mercilessly. The Volcano cannon erupted for the fifth time that day, and claimed another victory.

Sharon bit her lip. A costly one, but a victory. "Hobbs, our right las is gone. Switch to the right side, leave the left for the Russes for now. I'll call in another bigger from behind." She said in a stony voice. The answering "Yes ma'am." was hollow, but Lieutenant Hobbs dutifully obeyed. She then thumbed the in-vehicle comm. "Yuna, you okay there?"

"Still alive, skip." Came the voice of the right sponson heavy bolter's gunner. Even though Sharon can detect a small wavering in the brunette gunner's voice, she did not comment on it. "Sit tight there." She said instead. "We're moving off. Lester, step on it."

The Shadowsword's driver obeyed, and the super-heavy Titan killer moved off to find new foes to exercise his righteous anger upon.

{oOo}

Marcus was kneeling under the rear hatch of the Chimera his squad was sheltering in. He had given his orders, and now he was getting ready to lead the charge, so to speak. "Okay." He said. "We'll round the Leman here." He pointed at the place he talked about in the rough sketch he scribbled in the dirt. "They would be definitely watching the approach on the left side of the tank. The other side is covered by the autogun across the way. When Flint opens up, we will rush forward and jump into the crater. Slaughter every fucker there, and we will then protect Keller as he does his job." He finished, looking at Isabella. "Any comments?"

"Yeah, Sergeant. Your drawings fucking suck."

"Keep your jaw shut, Keller, and I will not make you eat dirt." Marcus answered the smartassed marksman lightly, then thumped their helmets. "Okay, let's move out."

As they darted from cover, the autogun opened up briefly until they got under the Leman Russ lying a few feet away. As they passed, Marcus bashed the side of the Chimera, then started counting in his head. They immediately moved to the other side of the tank.

"Seven, eight, nine, ten. Now!" Flint's multi-laser opened up just in time, laser beams lancing through the Volscani guardsmen that got up to fire towards the trio. Three guardsmen fell, their bodies slashed in two by the cutting beams. Another dropped to the side, screaming hideously as he tried to stop the pulsing blood from the severed artery in his thigh, where the cauterising effect of the laser beam wasn't strong enough to hold back the tide of pressurised blood. The laser beams kept pounding the impromptu trench and the autocannon's shield.

Marcus darted as soon as he heard the screams. He was right in his assumption: The autogun crew was too shocked to open fire. He immediately dove into the crater that housed the other autogun, and came face to face with the surviving members of the second Volscani squad. Two grenades thinned their ranks, but still, three Guardsmen with bayonets and a tattooed Sergeant hefting an axe was no small matter.

But Marcus was a professional. His chainsword was immediately singing in his hand, and the roaring teeth expertly deflected the axe head the howling Sergeant swung towards him. Behind him, he felt a Volscani trooper moving up to bayonet him, but his charge was cut short as Isabella, wearing a manic grin and wielding a large, blackened machete longer than Marcus' forearm, interposed herself between him and her sergeant's back.

Marcus directed his attention back to the Volscani sergeant in front of him. The man was a maniac, probably only a sergeant because he was too manic to be a trooper and listen to one. His axe swung down again, without any finesse but with a lot of enthusiasm.

Sadly, enthusiasm did not make any difference against a chainsword-wielding professional. The teeth of the powered weapon first sheared through the wooden handle of the axe like tissue paper, then they slashed off the arm of the sergeant without pause. The sergeant could only give a short scream before an overhand sweep took off his head in a shower of blood. Marcus immediately danced aside as the tattooed maniac fell, and the lasgun beam splashed harmlessly on the back of the autogun shield behind him. He turned to face the trooper that fired at him, his pistol coming up. The man, obviously panicking, tried to adjust his aim, but the laspistol the Cadian carried was faster, and brought his efforts to an end with a blast right between the eyes.

Meanwhile Isabella performed a deadly dance with the bayonet-wielding trooper. The man had some experience obviously as he used the body of his rifle to deflect the slashes of the machete. But he did not count the other hand of the tall guardswoman. Her hand darted like a striking viper, and caught the barrel of the las rifle, pulling it to the side. The guardsman could only blink in surprise before the machete carved his face in two. As Isabella let her foe drop, her eyes widened in horror, meeting the cold eyes of the third Volscani trooper over the barrel of the lasgun aimed right between her eyes. Just as he was about to squeeze the trigger, though, Isabella felt a wave of heat pass over her shoulder, lightly singing her hair, and the man flinched, then fell over, a smoking hole in his throat. Isabella turned back, and met the tired eyes of her fellow soldier. "Keller, if you weren't so good a shot, I would have murdered you for that." She said, before leaning down and placing a small kiss on the lips of the shocked man. "But for saving my life, I think this is better."

Marcus, meanwhile, coughed to the side. "If you two lovebirds are done, get to work, Keller." Blushing, Guardsman Keller moved towards the lip of the crater.

Five minutes later, Squad Cole was moving off, leaving behind the corpses of two squads of Volscani troopers, and laden with loot from the wrecked vehicles.

{oOo}

"Sergeant!" Keller called down towards the rest of his squad from his vantage point on the ruined Baneblade. "I see a bunch of Volscani setting up a lascannon."

"Get down here, Keller!" Marcus yelled back. "Okay people, break's over. We have a lascannon to take out."

The tired squad gathered their weapons and backpacks and climbed to their feet, moving out of the shadow of the great tank corpse where they took shelter from the sun and the enemy. Even though they were exhausted due to their trek across the blasted former parade ground, they were still eager to fight, vengeance for their murdered fellows burning in their blood.

Marcus quickly moved his squad silently from cover to cover, moving up to the shell crater where a lascannon was set up to pound the rear of the armoured Cadian battle line. The Cadian spearhead was almost reaching the armoured feet of the two Volscani Leviathans that supported the centre of their line, and the withering fire the battlecannons lining the flanks of the massive behemoths were reaping a steep toll among the Cadian tanks. Orders from Colonel Creed at the Indomitable pulled back the foremost units to a precise range where the battlecannons of the Leviathans were ineffective, the Macro Cannons can't depress enough to hit effectively, and that allowed the Basilisks and super-heavies among the Cadian battle line to pound the Void Shields of the warmachines. The number of guns hitting the Void Shields were too few to perform effective penetration despite the brief lances of Volcano Cannon fire stabbing into the flashing blue domes, but still, the Volscani were forced to focus on the Cadian tanks almost exclusively, with the small exception of firing upon the still standing, albeit wounded giant of the blue Command Leviathan towering above the Cadians, which allowed the infantry to push even closer to the armoured line, crushing the remaining Volscani skirmishers.

Marcus' unit was one of the last that was still in the no man's land between the approaching foot infantry front and the rears of the Cadian tanks, whose ranks were thinned with the outrageous losses they have took in the two hours since the battle started.

They were still trying to root out the last pockets of Volscani skirmishers that were setting up traps for the coming infantry and putting some last shots to the rears of the Cadian tanks. This group was among the second, and they were setting up a lascannon to catch a manoeuvring Chimera platoon at range from the side.

Marcus wasn't about to allow that.

His squad surrounded him as he silently pointed at various vantage points, sending them off to take their positions. Arthur and Jenny pushed to the side to get good trajectories for their grenades. Keller climbed the side of a ruined Chimera and laid down, commanding a good field of fire for his deadly lasgun. Flint, Dane and Isabella crouched next to the same Chimera, ready to dart in in a moment's notice with lasguns at the firing position. Marcus briefly stood behind them, and pulled the flexible antenna of the Vox caster down, attaching it to a clip at the bottom of the tank, to lower visibility. Uther pushed forward, darting between hulks with a speed belying his wound and his bulk, to reach a vantage point and range good enough to reduce the towering, carapace armoured Volscani sergeant standing over the slate-grey clad troopers to his constituent atoms in a single shot with his Melta.

Marcus scouted out the positions of his squad for one last time, then reached up, and gently touched the shoulder of Guardsman Keller.

Keller, almost instinctively squeezed the trigger of his lasgun. With a tortured shriek of displaced air, the bright white bolt momentarily shone in the intervening space, and the head of the Volscani gunner, crouching down behind the sights of his lascannon, disappeared into pink mist.

With the signal of the las bolt, several things happened at once. Twin muffled thumps announced the appearance of two frag grenades that arched over the lip of the crater. Just as they started descending, and the Volscani sergeant started towards Keller's position, another flash of light appeared from the other side of the crater.

A meltagun was a weapon designed to melt through the armour of battle tanks in short range. It did its job by projecting an immense heat wave to the direction of the target. It was capable of melting the glacis plate of a Leman Russ battle tank at 50 meters.

What it did to a barely armoured human body just 10 meters away was simply the stuff of nightmares.

As the heat impacted his body, the sergeant screamed briefly, but it was mercifully cut short, as the immense temperatures fried his body's living responses. In the short moments it took his body to hit the ground, his eyes burst and caught fire along with his hair and clothes, and finally, as his body impacted the packed earth, it burst into a shower of pink mist that immediately burst into a gout of flame, disappearing with naught but a black scar remaining on the ground.

As the horrified Volscani troopers leapt towards their rifles in panic, twin flames burst among them, and screams began anew as the airbursting grenades shredded them at waist level, the razor sharp flechettes and pieces of white hot metal that was once the bomb casing tore gaping holes in their abdomens, groins and legs. They collapsed in their spilled guts and waste in pitiful heaps. A couple soldiers, barely aware of their surroundings, picked up their lasguns with limp hands, empty eyes seeking the ruined vehicles around them for any sign of the enemy. It was almost a mercy when the las bursts from the remaining members of the Squad Cole pierced their bodies, ending their lives.

As they walked down into the crater, Squad Cole was trying to ignore the smell of blood and body waste. "Good shot, Keller." Marcus remarked, kicking aside the body of the Volscani gunner. Flint sidled up to him, his eyes on the lascannon.

"Good cannon, sir. No damage."

Marcus just arched an eyebrow towards the tech-minded Guardsman.

"There is something called spoils of war."

"How do you plan to carry this huge thing?" Marcus asked Flint, gesturing at the meter-and-a-half length of the lascannon. Flint, with a smile, immediately moved towards the cannon.

"This is classic Mars Pattern, sergeant. It unscrews here, here and here." He tapped two points on the barrel as well as the base. "There must be mag clips." He bent down to rifle through the corpse of the Volscani gunner. "Ah, here they are. With these clips, you attach the barrel segments to the shield." He pulled two pairs of straps out of the box that contained the energy cell. "These straps allow it to be carried as a backpack. This second set does the same for the energy cell. Thus, two people can easily carry it."

Marcus was amused. "Okay, if anyone volunteers to carry your energy cells, you can have it." Keller approached the duo.

"Uh, I volunteer, sergeant. I always wanted to shoot one of these."

Marcus just wiped his face in exasperation "You already conspired about this, right?" He asked. Guilty looks were his only answer. "Okay, but it is your toy and you take care of it." He finally conceded. But they were interrupted by the loud laughter of Corporal Smiles, who was scouting the armoured battle line from the top of a nearby Chimera.

"Sergeant, come, you have got to see this. Everybody, up there." The normally dour corporal was giggling like a schoolgirl as she pointed to the sky behind the Volscani Leviathans.

Marcus searched the smoke clouds for a few moments before his eyes caught what the grenade launcher toting corporal saw. When he did, a wry grin stretched his face. Around him, his entire squad started laughing.

"That's Colonel Creed for ya." He said, chuckles rising from his own relieved throat. "Always with a plan. Now they are screwed."

Among the smoke clouds of burning vehicles that spread over the battlefields, gigantic shapes appeared behind the Volscani Leviathans, towering over even the building sized war machines.

As the winds shifted, an errant gust blew away a small, black cloud, and Marcus met the eyes of an Imperial Warlord Titan.

{oOo}

With the pull back order, Sharon and the rest of the superheavies spearheading the attack instead reversed their engines and rushed back, weapons firing as they retreated. They stopped at the assigned point, and awaited instructions as the artillery behind them brought down a curtain of fire to mask their movements. Squadrons of Leman Russ tanks took screening positions around the super heavies, while the massive tanks prepared to go hull down in craters and burning hulks in preparation for a defence.

Sharon was lightly bleeding from a slight wound at her temple, from striking her head on the hatch handle next to her when a Bombard shell hit too close for comfort and violently shook the tank, and took the break time to tend to the blood coating the left side of her face. She pulled a handful of wet wipes from the small medkit mounted on the armour plate to her right, and wiped down the sticky fluid, her eyes never leaving the screens in front of her. The cameras on the right side, where the shell struck, were out of alignment. Guns had just climbed out of the cabin to calibrate them. All over the tank, the slight break in the battle was used to perform small repairs and maintenance to keep the tank operational.

Their losses were thankfully light after losing _Right Hand of the Angry One_and his escorts. Squadrons of Leman Russ tanks and Chimera personnel carriers suffered heavy losses, but the super heavy companies only lost another Stormblade to a marauding band of Volscani Leman Russ Vanquishers that scored two more super heavy kills in the earlier minutes of the battle before they were wiped out by three Baneblades ganging on them. Sharon did not even want to imagine what the commander of that squadron felt when he saw three massive super heavies appeared around his squadron like vengeful demigods emerging from the smoke.

She caught Guns swinging in through the side hatch with the corner of her eye and turned towards him. "Cameras are online, ma'am." The sergeant replied. Sharon nodded and switched her monitors on, displaying the battlefield vista spreading before her.

The field was a charnel house, with countless vehicles and thousands of bodies lying in various levels of destruction. Earthshaker cannons kept on pounding the slowly advancing Volscani line, but Sharon's eyes were not on the tanks, but the Leviathans. Her eyes trailed down the massive armoured prow of the warmachine, and rested on the gaping maw of the Macro Cannon. She set her jaw. "Guns, give me a targeting solution for the maw of that hulk. Even if we just frizzle the Void Shields a bit, I want to give them a kick."

"Yes ma'am!" answered Guns, and immediately trained the cannon towards the massive cannon.

Sharon stabbed the firing button viciously.

The beam sheared through the smoke clouds, opening a hole through them that displayed the entirety of the Leviathan war machine for Sharon.

Thus, she had the front seat for the Void Shields of the Leviathan fizzling a split second before the beam struck them, and the laser bolt going through the muzzle of the cannon. And she was in the perfect position to see the massive explosion disintegrate the front half of the Leviathan as her bolt tore into the ammunition of the Macro Cannon and ignited it.

"Guns, did we just score a Leviathan?" She asked, barely able to believe her eyes.

Then the long range comm unit in front of the comm specialist behind her, silent due to the jamming emitting from the Volscani war machines, came alive as a signal magnitudes above in power came through.

"Creed, this is Princeps Themistocles of Legio Gryphon. I believe you owe me a beer."

{oOo}

The Volscani general, eyes wide with disbelief, listened in stunned silence as the short message sheared through his jamming and blared from his comms.

He only had time to raise his eyes to the heavens and scream his hated foe's name once before the plasma bolts from the Titan Cannons behind his force tore his Leviathan and his body apart.

{oOo}

Creed lit a new cigar, and tossed the lighter back at Aitken, a massive grin splitting his face.

"Beer's on me, Themistocles. I owe you one."

{oOo}

AN: In honour of Lord Khuzdul's return, this archivist has decided to give this subplot a bit of a rehaul, and has merged many of the older 'chapters' together. So now you have fewer, but much longer chapters. Enjoy!


	2. Part II

{oOo}

_13th Black Crusade Part II_

{oOo}

Lorgar watched the swirling currents of the Warp surrounding the Eye of Terror from the viewports of his flagship. The multicolored swirl of the Immaterium, while chaotic, soothed his mind and reaffirmed his faith in the Ruinous Powers. For were they not the ones who ruled over this realm of souls, while his father, the false god, wallowed in his realm of flesh?

He turned away from the mesmerizing sight, and caught the eyes of his mentor, Kor Phaeron.

"Any news from Cadia?" The traitor primarch asked.

Kor Phaeron shook his head, his lined, aged face belying the fire of insane zeal in his eyes.

"No, my lord, but that is to be expected. The aim of Volscani was never to subdue Cadia before we got there. But they must be still fighting everywhere on the planet, and their last message indicated a great hope for success."

Lorgar devoured the distance between the viewport and his throne-like chair in three giant steps, and lowered himself in his chair with the regal grace of a god in repose.

"I have faith in you, Kor Phaeron. We shall see my father's..." That word was spat like a curse. "...lapdogs tearing at each other, squirming like a headless worm, just before I crush them."

Little they knew, their own plan was putting just the right man into the wrong place.

{oOo}

Sharon walked around Blade of Fury, her fingers trailing over the dents, scratches and cuts marring the beautiful armour and the camouflage paint.

There was no time to heal every single dent, every single hole and scratch on his beautiful body, but even with his beauty marred, Sharon loved him. He was an old warhorse, who rolled out of the giant factories of Agrippina maybe ten lifetimes ago, but his grizzled charm did not diminish, but increase since then, along with the sheer spirit he possessed. He was the noble knight, the proud warlord, and the alpha wolf protecting his pack. And he was hers.

Sharon rounded the left treads and laid her hands on the glacis plate, her fingers following a lascannon scar. He was battlescarred alright, probably less than one percent of his original armorplast cast in the forges of Adeptus Mechanicus remaining on him, the rest being all replacements for one would or another, sometimes from the corpses of his friends or enemies.

Sharon's eyes followed the large crane that brought the replacement Lascannon turret over the tank, as the technicians dumped the last pieces of the old one on the ground next to him. She briefly closed her eyes, then leaned forward and placed a gentle kiss on the soot-blackened glacis plate. She could have sworn she heard the tank hum in response. She smiled, then pulled out the small can of paint and the brush she brought. Humming a light tune, she started painting the silhouettes of his new victories on the increasingly full left armoured skirt.

When she left the hangar, she had a small screw from the ruined turret, twisted from the heat, clutched in her hand. It would join its brothers in her small apartment in Kasr Ankar, in a place of honour, along with the crewman that was killed in the explosion.

Her wall was starting to fill up, with yellowed photographs and rusted pieces of armour or machinery all over it, but Sharon didn't mind. Such was the life of a Cadian, and the noble dead deserved to be remembered, at least by the one who commanded them.

{oOo}

Marcus stood in attention as the small jars containing the dog tags of his two dead soldiers were lowered into a small hole dug in the vast military graveyard of Kasr Gerren. Rows upon rows of grave markers surrounded them, with priests walking between them in their daily rounds to find markers with names illegible. That was the Cadian custom, since grave space was premium and hard to find in Cadia. When the name on a grave became illegible, they assumed the glories were forgotten, and they dug the bones up, and dumped them in a mass grave. Among the rows, here and there, one can spot other small groups, mourning friends fallen in today's battle.

Even with the hard granite markers, the harsh weather of Cadia all too frequently erased the names of those who died for her, and claimed their souls, forever.

Marcus shook his head to disperse the unexpected poetic thoughts, and turned back to the two guardsmen covering the graves. The markers with the names of the fallen were placed over the small holes, then the grave diggers left the squad alone. They were the only ones at the grave, for neither guardsman had any family alive on planet. Marcus kneeled over the markers, and his fingers lightly ran over them. These two would disappear from his mind even faster than the others, even though they were family, brothers and sisters in arms for so long.

For a storm was coming. Marcus knew that well, for he vividly remembered the mark of Khorne on the axe of the sergeant he slew. And before the storm passed, many more would die.

Such was the life of a Cadian.

{oOo}

Creed stalked through the halls of the giant citadel at the heart of the Kasr Derth, which doubled as the headquarters of the Cadian High Command and the Governor's Palace. In his hands, he held an axe head, marked with the Mark of Khorne.

Commissar Aitken and Sergeant Kell hurriedly followed him, barely keeping up with the stocky man even though both were taller than him.

"Ursarkar, you can't, they told you, please..." Commissar Aitken tried to reason with his friend, but it was quite obvious that Creed was at the end of his rope.

Hours ago, after they came back from the battlefield with the body of the former Governor General of Cadia, Marus Porelska, a bunch of rear echelon cowards, after showering him with praise and telling him that his efforts would be rewarded handsomely, had the temerity to tell him, the highest ranking surviving Cadian officer in the system, flush with victory over the murderers of his kin, to all too respectfully piss off and let the grown-ups decide his fate.

Creed, ever respectful of the chain of command, accepted their orders.

But this was getting ridiculous.

He could get nothing. The entire Cadia was frozen with indecision, lack of orders from up high stopping everything on the damn planet. His troops were back at their barracks, the vehicles back in their pens, the guns back in the armouries. Like peacetime, while those bastards squabbled. While sixteen wounded regiments wallowed in indecision, and an uneasy feeling grew and grew in Creed's gut.

Then, at the morning of the second day, a returning sergeant brought this axe head to him and Creed _snapped_.

Chaos. Every instinct he had screamed that there was more to the Volscani assault, that the bastards knew they had no hope of surviving. The reason had eluded him, or maybe he knew it, but refused to admit it. But the axe blade with the Khorne symbol hammered it home painfully.

Chaos marks. Beheading of the Cadian command. This squabbling, indecisiveness.

This stank of one thing.

His fist landed like a battlecannon shell on the steel doors of the conference room, and he stalked inside, throwing the axe blade in front of the has-been retired generals and rear echelon motherfuckers populating the room.

"This is what we are facing." He growled. "Either decide, or get out of the way, or we will all be crushed." Angrily, he pulled out a cigar, snatching the lighter from Kell's hand with a painful slap, even though Kell was too professional to show it. "I and the men of Cadia expect your decision. I will be in my headquarters." He turned and stalked off.

{oOo}

The decision was swift after that, but it was not an expected one. Everyone thought one of the old generals would take up the mantle.

"No. Not only no but hell no!" Creed yelled at Aitken, as he approached him for the third time. "I won't be governor. I am a field commander, for Emperor's sake! I won't let those fossils to push this job on me and wash their hands off it, and then snatch it out of my hands the moment their survival is assured. I won't be a pawn."

Aitken chuckled. "I don't think you are fully aware of the situation, Ursarkar." He pointed out. "They do not have much choice. Not after they heard what I heard coming here."

Creed turned towards his friend, eyes curiously blank. This was the third time the council tried to unload the responsibility on him. Each time before, the document they sent him was loaded by concessions and regulations that would leave him but a puppet in matters of the state, only to serve as a sacrificial lamb against the Chaos, a convenient scapegoat, to suffer the failure of the inevitable invasion, but without any actual power to do what he can do against it.

Aitken held out a document to him. "They are getting desperate." He pointed out. "Read."

The document header read:

_**On the establishment of the office of the Lord Castellan**_

Creed's eyes skimmed over the document offering him the absolute power on Cadia and in the Cadian System. Aitken pointed towards the patio doors leading to the balcony of his office, looking over the private parade grounds of the Cadian 8th regiment.

Creed, face stony, opened the doors. A riot of sound met him, countless guardsman of a dozen regiments welcoming him with cheers. Soon, the cheers made way to a simple chant:

"_Creed! Creed! Creed! Creed! Creed! Creed! Creed! Creed!_"

Creed smiled. Aitken moved to stand next to him. "They did not give those old bastards much choice." He was surprised to hear a chuckle from his old friend.

Ursarkar E. Creed turned towards his long time companion. "As they should, Max." He said, pulling out a cigar. This time, the hands that gave him the lighter was trembling. Commissar Maximilian Aitken was pale.

"Tell them I accept." Added Creed, exhaling a satisfying cloud of smoke. "And then we can finally, earnestly get to work in saving ourselves from this onslaught."

{oOo}

"Admiral, I have a priority transmission from the surface." said an aide, approaching the throne-like chair of Admiral Angus Quarren on the command bridge of . The admiral turned to the aide with a curious look. He knew the Cadians down there just handled probably the dumbest rebellion attempt in the history of the Imperium. The attempt might have been dumb, but it hurt the Cadians, and they lost the High Command, so other than routine patrols and protection detail for convoys and planets, Cadian Sector Fleet, which was subordinate to the Governor of the sector and thus to the Cadian High Command, was almost frozen.

This annoyed Quarren immensely. For he knew shit was about to hit the fan. Cadian Sector Battlefleet was barely up to full strength since the debacle at the Frenerax Dust Cloud: There _Terminus Est_ and her band of Chaos-infested museum ships gave the fleet a throughout reaming. Quarren almost chuckled in remembrance. Chaos didn't know how big a favour they did to the Imperium that day, by blowing up the Emperor class battleship _Dominus Aurum,_ along with the arrogant, zealous but tactically incompetent Lord Admiral Tannhäuser. That was not the only sign. Ships carrying the Mark of Nurgle had appeared among the systems of the Cadian and Agrippina Sectors, seeding dozens of worlds with deadly diseases before being drawn off. The horrifying plagues made the dead walk on those worlds, and countless regiments and Space Marine chapters have been drawn off other assignments to combat the rising tide of Nurgle-infested corpses.

This left the linchpin of the entire sector, and the entire Imperium, in a sense, the Cadian Gate, woefully undermanned. While the reinforcements were en route from dozens of sectors all through the Segmentum Obscurus and Segmentum Solar, none were here yet, and no more then thirty Cadian regiments, ten of them armoured, half of them Interior Guard, the Legio Gryphon Titan Legion, with sixty Titan warmachines of various types, and the battered Battlefleet Cadia with thirty battleships and over seventy cruisers, was the only thing holding the very Gates of Hell closed.

And a feeling in Quarren's gut told him that those very gates were about to burst open, unleashing hell upon them.

'Come and get them' he thought, as he reached for the communication report. 'We will be waiting with a great big load of damnation for you, fresh from the forge.'

When his eyes skimmed over the report, his grin widened. It seemed Chaos had just managed to do another inadvertent favour to the Imperium.

Colonel Creed had just managed to get himself elected to be the supreme commander of the entire Cadian system.

The aide almost took a step backwards, as an extremely predatory grin stretched the lips of the Admiral, giving him the impression of a large, carnivorous animal inspecting a small morsel, preparing to play with it before dinner.

'Now things got really interesting.' Quarren thought. He turned to the aide, amusement shining in his eyes from the expression on the youth's face.

"Open a channel to the Cadian High Command. Tell Col... Lord Castellan Creed Admiral Quarren wishes to talk to him about our fleet orders."

{oOo}

Creed's grizzled face appeared on the viewscreen as Angus Quarren settled in his chair in front of the Comm console. The former colonel looked somewhat tired, but Quarren knew this was a natural state of being for Creed: The man's brain never stopped, and most of the time his body was left behind playing catch up.

The new Lord Castellan of Cadia was his usual curt self. "Morning, Angus. What do you have for me?"

"First, I should congratulate you for your new appointment." the naval officer said, eliciting a small smile from the Cadian. Creed nodded, acknowledging the point, and Quarren grew serious. "I won't lie to you, Ursarkar. Not good. I have just over one hundred ships, not counting the escorts, to cover the nine planets and the orbital industry. I don't know how big a force those sick bastards can drag through the Warp, but considering the force they threw at us at Frenerax it would be quite significant. Thankfully AdMech managed to cripple that damned Planet Killer of theirs over Arx, but still, they managed to pick up at least two of the Blackstones. Considering how big a disturbance they are stirring up out there and comparing it to what happened over at Gothic sector, we might see those." A severe frown marred the admiral's face, his patrician features grim. "There is one thing I can definitely tell you, old friend: I can't prevent landings with my current force. Be prepared to fight."

"How are the orbital defences doing?" Creed asked.

"They are sufficient over Cadia, Korolis, Kasr Holn, Kasr Sollen and Macharia. Over Macharia, I managed to get the sixth orbital fortress online ahead of schedule. But we have problems with Kasr Partox and Solar Mariatus. A meteorite impact has crippled the main station over Kasr Partox, and there was an accident in the third quadrant fortress over Solar Mariatus. They have massive gaps in their coverage, and I am not sure how well they can hold. As you know, we don't have any fixed defences over Prosan, Vigilantum and St. Josmane's Hope."

Creed scratched his chin. "Prosan and Vigilantum doesn't have a lot of personnel, and they have extensive facilities. Since your ammunition stockpiles are at Vigilantum let's hold that one. Order the evacuation of Prosan and rig cyclonic charges. Let's hope they ignore the empty planet, if they don't and we can't clean it, we can blow it." His brow creased as he considered his options. "What are the news on reinforcements?"

"From what we have heard, Warp is a mess." Answered Admiral Quarren. "Closest available, a Death Guard/Imperial Fists strike group, is about three days out. They have came to hunt down Typhus and his ilk, but I think I can get them to redirect here. They don't have much that can help me, but they can help you. Agrippina promised an additional Titan Legion and the services of the Home Guard, along with a detachment of their system defence forces. I think we both can expect some nifty presents from our AdMech friends. Archmagos Tellarian said he would be arriving himself. But they have to skirt the Eye, and with all this I don't think they can be here faster than five days. Battlefleet Gothic will be here in one week, ten days at most. Lord Angron and World Eaters are busy with the Nurgle infestations cropping up all over the sector. I think Angron himself is in the Pyrea system. That's five days at the earliest, even if they can extract themselves from that mess today. Let's say fifteen so we won't be disappointed. After Lord Angron arrived to deal with the plagues he asked for reinforcements from Segmentum Solar. From what I have heard, something made them take notice. It seems Lord Dorn himself is leading a large detachment of Battlefleet Solar, along with most of his own legion, Blood Angels, Salamanders, Black Templars, a lot of other chapters, regiments from Armageddon and Elysium and at least four other Titan Legions are coming. Lord Russ is also leading a sizeable detachment of Space Wolves and White Scars, along with Catachans here, though half of those chapters, along with Lord Jaghatai himself and most of the Silver Knights, are rushing about Segmentum Tempestus pissing on forest fires springing up everywhere. Lady Persephone and Sororitas Ordo Silentium are around the Maelstrom, but I heard they are starting to move towards here. Sadly, all of these are more than a month or two out, and a feeling says that it would be mostly decided by the time they get here, the end result would be pretty much determined." Of course 'And we would be either victorious or dead' was left unsaid.

Creed nodded, his eyes grim. "Okay then. With the exception of the Death Guard and Agrippinaa, we must assume we are on our own. Even they would only arrive after the fight starts. The aim of the Volscani was to destabilize the Cadian High Command. They almost managed it. In normal circumstances, if I hadn't forced their hands, this mess would have lasted a lot longer, but not that long. So we must expect that we would be hit very soon, within a couple of days, at most." He considered the troop concentrations on the system charts before him. "We concentrated our forces as best as we can, but there is not much in the system we can afford to lose. We will be spread thin, and there is nothing we can do about it." He tapped a spot on the map. "Get half of your troop transports and try to evacuate as many civilians as you can from Macharia. That's the largest concentration of civilians, and I don't think we can afford to switch regiments between worlds during the fight anyway. If the Death Guard and Imperial Fists arrive, we can always use their ships in a pinch."

He then took some notes. "Concentrate on those worlds with incomplete or damaged orbital defences. I won't presume to tell you how to do your job, but keep Solar Mariatus out of Chaos hands at all costs! Them, Vigilantum and Kasr Partox would probably require most of your force." He then closed his eyes briefly, the pain of a hard decision making itself known on his features. You can keep your coverage of St. Josmane's Hope relatively light. They have extensive surface to orbit batteries and the planet is heavily fortified. And even though I hate leaving anyone to the Chaos, that is our most expendable location. I'll order Colonel Kaldor to arm the trustworthy members of the prisoner population, and rig up virus bombs in the life support systems." His knuckles were white as he gave the last order. "Send down a team to rig the generatorium grid. In the worst case scenario, we will use that to destroy the planet."

Quarren nodded grimly. Even though they could not know what the tides of war would bring, Creed had just given orders to destroy two worlds of his own system, and despite only one of those worlds being populated and with convicts at that, that was never an easy decision. "Consider it done." He answered.

"They'll want Cadia the most, so I'll make my stand here. If we lose Cadia, the system is lost. I'll keep most of Legio Gryphon here. Sadly, I can't offer the worlds under your protection any Titans. We have to keep most here, and distribute them along worlds with no naval coverage. You will have to deal with any Chaos Titan landings using your ships. We will try to destroy as many as them we could with the orbital defences, then hold out on the ground." Creed's jaw was set. He looked determined. "By the grace of the Princess and the favour of the Emperor we shall hold, Admiral. I won't let Cadian System to fall. We will hold, and when the Astartes and the Battlefleets get here, we will push them back into their hole, and shove them in."

{oOo}

Admiral Quarren gripped the arm rests of his seat as his eyes watched the gigantic holoscreens of his flagship, the Emperor-class battleship _Malleus Imperialis_. The navigators and the psykers of the fleet have been tracking the warp signature of the Chaos fleet for more than a day as it moved through the Cadian Gate towards the Cadian system. It was not hard, and the psykers did not have any difficulty except the risk of daemon attacks. The staff of serene psykers and Culexus agents from the Officio Assasinorum watched over them because of that. The reason for the risk and the ease was simple: The Chaos fleet was immense. Thousands of daemon-powered warp signatures crowded the visions of psykers, as the avalanche of Chaos rolled, unstoppable, towards the few that stood their ground at the Cadian system.

And this was the moment the Chaos fleet would break through the warp-realspace barrier that seperated the Materium of the Cadian system from the horror of the Immaterium. The psykers were herded to their psi-shielded rooms, and Culexus agents and serene psykers took their places in the hallways out of those cells to stand guard against any daemonic possession attempt that might get past the mighty wards put up by the best acolytes of the Ecclesiarchy.

Just in time, as the barrier, more stalwart due to the black pillars that dotted the landscape of Cadia and the other worlds of the system, was ripped apart in an orgy of color and warp lightning, and a psychic scream that was almost felt by even the non-psykers nearby. In the cells of the psykers, even behind the mighty wards, the psychic children of humanity, normal and serene alike, screamed. Only those in close proximity to the warp-deadening soullessness of the Culexus agents were spared from the pain, and it fell upon them to tend to their suffering fellows.

From the hole in the fabric of space time, came the hordes of Chaos, thousands of ships of various types. It was a dark tide, tortured shapes and forms, a hellish landscape of insanity and terror that poured forth into the world of flesh to rip, tear, destroy and consume.

First came the bronze plated, stout hulls that belonged to those that fell to the Chaos God of rage, Khorne. Huge, armored prows for ramming and torpedo tubes that carried three hundred meter long weapons full of berserker boarders marked the character of space battle the Khornates preferred, while symbols as tall as buildings screamed their devotion to their god. Engines burned with a baleful crimson fire as they spotted the worlds that waited for them, and the prows pointed towards the pristine blue and green marble of Cadia, as the Khornates rushed towards glorious battle with cries to their Blood God.

Following them, and racing alongside, were the riot of color and elegant shape that belonged to the vessels consecrated in the name of the Chaos God of excess, Slaanesh. The ships that belonged to the Prince of Pleasure were works of art, beautiful, fair and lovely in a sense that defied human perception. But the sharpness of features and the blades that adorned the edges, the blades that glinted in the light of the distant Cadian sun, revealed the deadly nature of the inhabitants and the unbridled sadism that marked the perverse side of the Slaaneshi worship. Still, they were beautiful, fast vessels of death, pain and pleasure, and their prows aimed towards the distant string of worlds and fleets that awaited them.

The third wave that emerged lacked the beauty of the Slaaneshi ships or the martial glory of the Khornates. Rusted hulks, that looked like they were fresh out of a space graveyard, moved or drifted out of the weeping sore that opened in the skin of the universe. If they had color, it was naught but the rust and mould that plated their bodies, and the organic growths that pulsed through the openings in the armor, like scars of a foregone defeat. The sides were lined with rusted barrels backed by a pulsating, yellow, diseased wall of flesh, and the yawning mouths of weaponry looked like they were rusted shut ages ago. Among them were a ship, the gold plating flaking off, ancient beyond measure, with a swarm, even visible in space, a vast, kilometers wide cloud of pestilence, insectoid forms and glinting, multifaceted eyes, drifted forward, the engines barely pushing it. It was the ship that was synonymous with betrayal, treachery and heresy of the foulest kind: _Terminus Est_, the flagship of the Herald of Nurgle, Typhus, and the vessel of the Plague Marines, the traitors of the Death Guard.

The fourth, and final wave consisted of a multitude of shapes, forms and colors. One thing common among them, for they morphed even as they drifted forward out of the Warp, was the sorcerous lightning that arced over their hulls. These were the sorcerous vessels that belonged to the Chaos Lord of Change, the Changer of Ways, Tzeentch, and their gun ports burned with eldritch energies, ready to unleash the fury of the unholy magics they contained over the defenders of Cadia.

In the middle of the formation of sorcerer-ships was an immense shape. The vessel bore the markings of the Dark Mechanicus, but it was the eight pointed star of Chaos Undivided that was displayed in the place of prominence. The immense vessel was designed like a cathedral. Towering spires rose out of the main body, with a central hall that bore a thousand stained glass windows, all displaying scenes of dire punishment visited upon the unbelievers. Over the eight pointed star that was carved into the face of the cathedral, in the place of prominence on the face of the central spire, stood the leering, daemonic face that was the banner of the Word Bearers legion. Behind the face, stood the man that was the source of Imperium's woes, and the leader of this foul invasion force.

Lorgar, primarch of the Word Bearers and the Daemon Prince of Chaos Undivided.

Admiral Quarren's eyes narrowed when he noticed the massive vessel in the center of the formation, but one thing caught his eyes: A huge scar at the ship's prow, that marked its greatest defeat, and the triumphant, if bitter, end of the Gothic War.

For this was the vessel named _Blade of Faith_ by its commander and _Planet Killer_ by those who know it, and the scar marked the place where Ark Mechanicus _Vision of Mercury_ struck the massive vessel in her suicide run. The sacrifice of the Mechanicus vessel had saved the planet Gethsemene, over which the Imperial fleet struck a crippling blow to the forces of Chaos, and destroyed the primary and the most feared weapon the ship possessed: The Armageddon Cannon, the massive, planet killing warp weapon. For this, the battle flag of _Vision of Mercury _was honored in the hall before the Eternity Gate, the door that led to the Imperial Throne, and a model of the vessel was placed in the palace of Lady Tekhne on Olympia, rumored to be build by her own hands.

'Let's see if we can finish the job they started', wondered Admiral Quarren with a vicious grin on his face, as the Chaos fleet acted just as predicted. The massive collection of vessels, in a tight, titanic formation that warded them against raids by the outnumbered Imperial defenders, flowed towards Cadia and the heart of the system on a least time course. The Admiral's fingers lightly touched the communications stud on his chair's arm.

"This is Admiral Quarren. The bastards are doing just what we wanted them to do. The Emperor and Princess are with us, ladies and gentlemen. To battlestations. For Humanity, Imperium and Cadia!" His fingers twitched, switching channels. "Captain."

"Pax Serenitas, _this is Captain Herald. What can I do for you, Admiral?_"

"They are walking right into it, son. Arm the Nova Mines."

{oOo}

"_Arm Nova Mines._"

The lips of Captain Herald of the Lunar-class cruiser _Pax Serenitas_drew back in a humorless, but vicious grin at these words. His finger, already over the button he hoped he would be able to press, stabbed down without hesitation.

Space is a vast place. Even a ten kilometer war beast like the Chaos battleships rushing towards the loyal planets of Cadia is a mere speck of dust in its vastness. Again, due to this vastness, any sort of minelaying in space is doomed to failure, unless one knows the route the opponent would take exactly, or had big enough mines to make it a moot point.

Thankfully, the first point was in the favor of Cadians, as the massive main body of the Chaos warfleet, secure in its superiority, did not even consider a careful approach. With their numerical superiority over thirty to one in mere numbers, and even bigger in sheer weight of metal, even Lorgar's wildest dreams did not consider an effective resistance from the Cadian fleet in the system. His plan for space warfare was simple: Get to the planets as fast as possible, while protecting his flanks and outliers against raiding parties in a tight formation, and bombard the living crap out of the orbital fortresses and force a landing before any effective resistance can be organized on the ground. He intended to let the sheer power disparity to do the rest.

But Lorgar was no tactician, especially not in space battles.

The second point, Admiral Quarren, Lord Castellan Creed and Magos Thuldanin, the head Adeptus Mechanicus representative of the fleet, solved with some good old ingenuity and unorthodox thinking. The least time course was more or less apparent. The primary target, the crown jewel, so to speak, of the system, and the toughest nut to crack, was Cadia itself. So they predicted that Lorgar would hit it first, in an attempt to deny the defenders the most dependable rallying point in the system. The Chaos fleet's approach was easily tracked due to the massive warp signature they gave off, especially in the stifled Warp currents of the Cadian Gate, a side-effect of the Pillars of Cadia. It was a simple calculation to plot a least-time course from the warp breach to Cadia, and mine the way. Only problem was the margin of error, which was still vast in the empty void.

And thus, the duo that defended Cadia turned their gazes upon the only weapon that could fill that vastness.

The naval station and training ground planet, the ice world Vigilantum held massive stockpiles of armament, supplies and ammunition for the use of the Imperial Navy that held the Cadian sector. Among them was the ammunition reserves that were determined to supply a thousand-strong battleforce that was normally stationed in the Cadian system, like the thousands upon thousands of Nova Cannon shells for the cruisers and battleships that carried the deadly weapon.

Each skyscraper sized shell was fitted with an implosion warhead, that created a fleeting black hole. This effect crushed any mass that happened to be in the blast radius the size of a moon, making it a weapon that can destroy fleets.

The amount was such that the Nova Cannons present in Admiral Quarren's small fleet could have fired them non-stop for weeks before running out.

So, they were adapted to another purpose.

Proximity sensors and crude, primitive station-keeping thrusters were added to the shells by the Mechanicus adepts and any non-essential personnel of the fleet and the naval station, half a million people working for two days without pause. And then, the rapid cruisers and escorts of the fleet ferried the primed shells, thousands of them, and laid them along the projected course of the Chaos fleet, providing a net that stretched from a spot nearly million kilometers away from the projected entry point, towards the distant, shining jewel of Cadia. In the end, a glittering net, four million kilometers long, awaited the enemy to fall right in the middle.

And now, that labor was about to give fruit.

{oOo}

_Hellbred_, Chaos strike cruiser that formerly belonged to the White Scars legion, was the first vessel that detected the anomalous readings. Even skyscraper sized objects were not easy to notice in the vast blackness of space, and Nova Cannon shells, especially when stationary and unpowered unlike their usual state of traveling near the speed of light in a steath of plasma from the gun that fired them, were no exception. The cruiser's sensors noted two stationary, inert objects in space above and below, somewhere around eight hundred kilometers in distance. Other Khornate cruisers were passing near the objects without paying them any heed. The servitor responsible for monitoring the feeds started speaking in a droning voice:

"Objects on radar, bearing..."

"Somebody crush that thing, I don't care about every asteroid we meet on the way." Snarled the Space Marine captain of the vessel, his eyes intent on the screen and the scenery of Cadia, mouth already watering in anticipation of the carnage that awaited. Another Marine obliged, and a chainaxe lopped the Servitor in two. Similar scenes were taking place in many Khornate ships all over the fleet. Sadly the perimeter protection of the fleet belonged to Khornates and the Slaaneshi. A Tzeentchian or a member of the Dark Mechanicus might have been concerned, but the hedonists and berserkers in the outlying ships cared naught but the battle ahead.

{oOo}

In the dark interior of the Nova shell, a green light blinked soundlessly, any click the flipping switch might have made lost in the airless medium. Moments later, the crude logi-engine started counting the proximity alerts and distances. Within microseconds, the amount met the previously given count in its databanks for optimal detonation.

The light turned red. The detonator circuit connected.

{oOo}

Along the length of the tight Chaos formation, lights blinked briefly, then everything darkened as all light was sucked into the gravity wells of detonating Nova bombs.

As the Chaos warships shook with the detonations and the interference of gravitic wavefronts emitting from them, hundreds of vessels vanished in the black pits.

{oOo}

The Space Marine that destroyed the servitor was leaning down to drag the corpse off the bridge. He blinked when the gravitic warning sounded.

Then he, the captain, the bridge, the entire ship disintegrated into specks of energy and dust as two massive gravity waves tore the ship apart from different directions.

{oOo}

"Scatter!" Lorgar screamed. Kor Phaeron, worried, noted that his voice was uncharacteristically high. "Scatter. Get out of the blast radiuses, and find those damn ships that fired on us! Find them and kill them! They must be mere cruisers, otherwise they would have stood and fought, not dishonorably ambushed us! Move!"

'He is panicking. Barely two hours into the whole thing and he is panicking already.' He thought. Then his eyes caught Abaddon the Despoiler, the Luna Wolves traitor that headed the ground contingent of the fleet. The man was looking at the primarch. His eyes were narrowed, and his expression showed barely disguised contempt. Kor Phaeron frowned. Abaddon was becoming dangerous. After his victory in the Gothic War, and the capture of the Blackstone Fortresses, while Word Bearers limped home in a crippled ship, made him a rising star, especially in the eyes of the Chaos Gods they all worshipped.

Maybe too dangerous.

{oOo}

Admiral Quarren laughed with joy at the sight of the disintegrating Chaos fleet. The massive formation, with chunks already missing due to the Nova shells exploding among them, was splitting into numerous smaller arms, moving towards the dust clouds, gas giants and asteroid clumps of the system. The core that maintained course towards the inhabited planets of the system was spreading apart, far away from each other to avoid any more bursts.

Just as planned.

His finger touched the comm stub. "All ships, move out. Raid pattern. Target small groups, and obliterate. Avoid pitched battles with larger forces. We are not here to destroy them, people. Just hurt them like hell before they meet the cheerful welcome of Lord Creed's people! Get to it! For the Emperor!"

{oOo}

Smelting Station Sigma was the centerpiece of the Alpha belt, one of the three major asteroid belts of the Cadia system. The station was housed in an asteroid that was entirely hollowed. One face was dominated by four giant maws, each a hundred kilometers wide and fitted with titanic iris-shaped gates. Behind the gates, industrial laser arrays bigger than capital-class lance batteries and ship-sized tractor beam projectors rested, ready to carve up the asteroids the mining ships would tow through the gates (affectionately known as Hellmouths by the miner crews) and pass the resulting superheated slurry to the massive foundries that are housed within the asteroid to sort, smelt and turn into raw materials ready to be fed into the awaiting factories of the system. The other side of the massive rock was a patchwork of docking ports, kilometers tall docking spires and landing pads to receive the cargo ships that would carry the product. The ring between these two was covered with hab-domes that housed the millions of workers and their families.

Due to the abundance of raiders, Chaos and otherwise, in the Cadian system, Smelting Station Sigma also boasted countless lance, torpedo and mass driver batteries for protection. The defenders of the massive factory-station were reasonably proud of their weapons, which shredded a fifteen-cruiser Dark Eldar pirate squadron without a single loss during the last incursion of the sadistic Xenos. And these massive guns made this small-scale fortress the ideal rally point for Imperial forces. Especially considering the route Chaos fleet took.

The main thrust of the Chaos attack came through the ecliptic, bursting through to the Materium just inside the innermost member of the gas giant family that called the outer Cadian system home, and stabbed towards the massive F-class furnace that provided the light of the system. From that distance, the ten habitable worlds of the Cadian system were strung like a necklace of pearls around the beautiful white star. The route drew a large curve towards the star, aiming right at the crown jewel in the middle, Cadia herself. And in doing so, it passed right by Sigma, which orbited the distant star with .17 degree angle to the ecliptic with the air of a royal leading her court, hundreds of thousands of lesser rocks, towed to the searing light of her furnaces by her heralds the mining ships, each awaiting their turn to be welcomed into her infernal bosom and meanwhile forming an artificially maintained, hazardous asteroid thicket around her that protected her and hid her from the eyes and attentions of every ship except those who possessed the asteroid drift charts she alone can provide.

The thicket also concealed any ship within its boundaries in a lethal haze of micro and macro meteorites, hundred kilometer, shapeless rocks tumbling in, for those not in the know, unpredictable paths, often passing a hair's breadth of each other, colliding and breaking apart, and doing half the work of the mining lasers themselves.

Cruiser Squadron 15 of Battlefleet Cadia, under the command of Commodore Epifanio Stasander from his flagship Overlord class battlecruiser _Shield of Benevolence_, consisting of six Lunar and three Dominator class cruisers alongside the flagship, hid among the floating rocks, with the helmsman watching the drift charts and the sensor officers watching the sensor readouts like hawks. Micrometeorites burning up on the Void shields of the ships offered a magnificent light show of buzzing lightning bolts around the ships, but the attentions of the ten captains were on the expanding cloud of the Chaos armada.

Especially an extending arm consisting of four dozen Khornate ships, directly aimed at the seventy million kilometer wide asteroid cloud.

"Those look like they want to be our share of this fight." Commodore Stasander's Chief of Staff Captain Ferda commented lightly. The violet eyes of the Cadian woman tracked the widening Khornate formation as it moved through the space. The group showed caution uncharacteristic of usual Khornate tactics, most probably due to the unexpected Nova assault the Chaos fleet suffered. Behind the expanding screen of cruisers, the main body of the Chaos warfleet, bleeding but still massive, moved towards Cadia as it spread out like a cloud of pestilence.

Commodore Stasander nodded decisively as the Chaos cruisers approached the edge of the asteroid thicket and sperated into three groups. Without the drift charts, pushing through the field itself was suicide, so the Chaos warships, forty eight in all, a mix of Murder and Devastation class ships led by a single, massive Repulsive class grand cruiser. It was the Repulsive that worried the Commodore, as the massive Grand cruiser, while lacking the protections enjoyed by most Imperial vessels, bore a massive broadside usually enjoyed by battleships.

First two groups of the Chaos squadron, twenty ships apiece, curved to the sides to curl around the space rocks. The third group, led by the grand cruiser, turned upwards, displaying their bellies to the Imperial ships awaiting in the shadows and craters of larger asteroids. The tactical plot displayed the projected routes of the Chaos ships, and the Commodore's lips curved as the eight-ship lead group, secure in its superior firepower, displayed a course that would bring them within weapons range of the smelting station a full five minutes earlier than the flanking groups. He had a plan to extend that time. His finger found the comm stud.

"_Keeper of the Hidden Flame_, _Argent Ascension_, _Spear of Hope_, move towards the Eastern group. _Burning Fervor_, _Banner of Benediction_, _Crimson Storm_, move towards the western group. Spear of Hope and Crimson Storm are to disrupt enemy movements using their Nova cannons. _Keeper_, _Argent_, _Fervor_, _Banner_, cover them. Do not move out of the asteroid field, do not make yourselves targets. Dying is expressly forbidden. If they try to pursue, retreat into the field. Let them deal with the rocks."

The chorus of affirmatives sounded fully confident, not like men and women rushing forth to battle seven-to-one odds. Commodore Stasander felt a discreet squeeze on his upper arm. His eyes caught the violet orbs of his chief-of-staff, and the brunette woman gave him a reassuring smile. A glance around the flag bridge let him know that noone noticed the breach of protocol. Stasander coughed lightly, then pressed the comm stud again.

"Okay, our turn. _Hammer of Heavens_, move ahead, alongside the _Shield_. _Luminescent Heaven_, _Star of Redemption_, take flanking positions. We are moving up and behind. We are going to curve behind the smaller Chaos group and pin it between our guns and the defence guns of Sigma Station." The Imperial ships gracefully turned around, moving out of the shadows of the asteroids they were hidden in, and their engines burned brightly with blue plasma as they rushed to meet their enemies.

{oOo}

The Chaos fleet's main assault force moved through space in a spreading cloud of thousands of ships. From various vectors around the system, tiny pinpricks of light, plasma wakes of Imperial warships, moved towards the main body, while it shed small groups towards any asteroid outpost, dust cloud, Lagrange point and similar rallying point. Ahead, the ten massive orbital fortresses that protected Cadia loomed, titanic hulls studded with hundreds upon hundreds of lances, guns, torpedo launchers, plasma projectors, and the quad Nova cannons of each fortress jutting out of the immobile fortresses like the spear of a deity. Aboard the ships and the stations, over a million Imperial navy personnel and armsmen prepared themselves for the upcoming fight. Reserve reactors were fired up, weapons distributed among crews to repel boarders, and ammunition carried up from the magazines. Medical units set up triage posts in the depths of the stations and ships, as far away as possible from any dangerous location and possible hull breach, and the cavernous main medical bays were abuzz with activity as the doctors and medics prepared to receive the torrent of wounded any battle created.

At the bridge of each ship and station, commanders and flag officers watched their plots and counted down the seconds to weapon range. Every eye was on available screens, and every ear was turned towards possible orders.

Finally, the Apocalypse class battleship _Judicator_'s rangefinders turned green, painting a target at the edges of the Chaos warfleet. The Slaaneshi battleship, painted in the colors of the Emperor's Children traitors the Noise Marines, noticing the attention of her more heavily armed foe, started to desperately maneuver, along with the group of cruisers and frigates attending her, but there was no time.

Lord Captain Demetrius, in a calm tone, gave the short order.

"Fire."

The Nova cannon shell streaked through the heavens like an errant comet, and exploded two thousand kilometers off the port bow of the Chaos battleship, engulfing the Chaos battleship and her escorts in a punishing tide of gravitic energy. The warp engines of the escorts gave way, and a trio of violet stars marked their tombs in the cold emptiness of space. Immediately, from various directions, more Nova cannons and long range lance batteries joined in, along with answering lance and weapon shots from the Chaos fleet, beams and shells criscrossing the vast void on the edges of the Chaos warfleet.

The Battle of Cadian System has begun.

{oOo}

Commodore Stasander watched the asteroids open up before them in slow motion as the four ships of his small contingent moved towards the moon sized smelting station. When the ships finally cleared the densest parts of the belt, a chirp announced an incoming communication.

"Tight beam laser comm from the station, sir." Announced the young midshipman manning the comm console.

"On screen."

A weathered face topped with the shock of white hair and drawn features one gained through a lifetime of hard, back-breaking work found on a deep space mining station greeted him from the viewscreen. "Nice weather we're having, Guildmaster Steiner." Commodore Stasander greeted with a smile.

"Yeah, yeah, cruisery with a chance of Khornates." answered the lord and master of the Smelting Station Sigma in a gruff voice, but the twinkling in his dark eyes betrayed his amusement. "What does the Navy intend to do about it then?" He added.

Commodore leaned forward, green eyes intent on the tactical plot for a moment. "They would be within your weapons range in five minutes. They need an aditional two to get close enough to hit you, though. Mostly Murders, even though that Repulsive has some bigger guns, but not one Nova cannon visible on them, and since they are Khornates, they would be preferring short range armaments before they try to force a landing. Before they can get into position to open fire, I intend to hit them with a Nova salvo. Any hesitation, or a dividing of their forces would be good. If they split up, immediately open fire on whoever's coming towards you. If that big lump chooses you, hit it first. I'll target it with my Novas, so it would be at least scratched, so you might get through. If they stop or turn towards us, wait until my fleet gets into range and opens fire. My Lunars are lance heavy, so we can probably hold their attention sufficiently for you to send them a welcoming package worthy of Sigma."

"I'll do that." The stationmaster replied. "Can your captains keep those two hordes off our backs until we take care of these?"

"I trust them." Commodore answered. "But prepare to lose some rocks. They might try to piss them off enough to incite pursuit within the field, and exploding warp drives are hard on rocks."

"Ah, my good man," chuckled the elderly commander. "You can always find rocks. At worst, I can always pull one of these hulks, stripped bare by our batteries, with the marines and all in there, into the Hellmouth and make up the deficit by their own pieces."

Commodore chuckled. "A fitting end, that is. To fuel the Imperium with one's carcass after spending a lifetime trying to attack it." He grew serious, and gave the old stationmaster an encouraging smile. "You have your orders, Guildmaster. May the radiance of the Emperor light our path, and the blessing of the Princess shield our souls."

"Indeed captain. Sigma out."

{oOo}

The small Chaos fleet, led by the massive form of the Grand Cruiser, crested over the asteroid field and started descending towards the ecliptic and the shining lights of the Smelting Station Sigma. The long range batteries of the huge factory-moon stood silent. The Chaos Lord at the bridge of the _Incendium Gehennae_, the Repulsive-class Grand Cruiser grinned savagely in anticipation of the slaughter on the station.

"Contacts at 192, vertical 208." Droned one of the sensor servitors on the bridge.

The chaos lord turned to one of the slaves. "Identify."

"Four contacts, my lord. Three cruiser-sized, one bigger. Probably battlecruiser. approaching low from the behind, from inside the asteroid cloud." The slave sat up in his station in alarm. "I read seperations, sire. Nova sh..."

The slave could not finish his sentence before the near-lightspeed Nova shells from the forward mounted cannons of the Shield of Benevolence and Hammer of Heavens exploded between the ships of the force, rocking the massive ships and throwing everyone, even the armored Marines, to the ground.

{oOo}

First Nova cannon salvo from _Shield of Benevolence _and her smaller consort was thrown off slightly by the interference of the rocks floating in front of them, and instead of bracketing and tearing apart Incendium Gehennae, one of the shells went wide, directly striking the shields of a Murder class cruiser. The implosion warhead detonated, and soon all that remained of the massive cruiser was an expanding ball of plasma, the entire hull torn to shreds by the immense tidal force of the gravitic charge.

At the other side of the group, Incendium Gehennae limped away from a second detonation. The ship was still alive, but the Void Shields were severely drained and multiple leaks of atmosphere dotted its bulk, jetting out of the wounded vessel like plumes of feathers. Immediately, the entire Chaos force started changing headings, massive ships straining their engines to turn towards the incoming fire.

Moments later, spreads of torpedoes appeared from among the floating rocks, and stabbed towards the ships. Multiple nuclear flashes announced the detonations of the warheads against the void shields of the Chaos squadron. All but one of the remaining six cruisers emerged unscathed from the storm of fire, the last one, with shields already drained from the Nova bombs, appeared to be listing, belching atmosphere from a gaping wound on its port side.

The Chaos ships finally turned their broadsides towards the incoming Imperial ships, and the twin lance mounts on the broadsides of Murder class cruisers, along with the long range lance broadside of _Incendium_ opened fire as one. Bright spears of light sheared through skyscraper-sized rocks, and splashed on the Void shields of the Imperial squadron. Most of the hits spent themselves on the powerful shields of the _Shield_, as the massive ship interposed herself to protect her more fragile consorts and expose her lance-heavy broadside. One lance shot broke through the straining forward shields of the Lunar class cruiser _Luminescent Heaven_, but the weakened beam failed the penetrate the meters thick armored prow of the cruiser, only scoring a dark wound on the pristine golden painted armor.

Turning towards the enemy, once they are in lance range, three lance-heavy ships of the squadron opened up as one. Tens of bright spears tore through space and gored into strained shields. The entire broadside of three cruisers were focused on the closest two Murder-class ships. Void shields sparkled, then strained and broke. Streams of coherent light tore into the exposed flanks of the ships, vaporising weapons mounts, guidance systems, sensors and thousands of slave crewmembers as they mauled the Chaos cruisers.

The answering salvo of the Chaos squadron was decidedly weaker, the maimed cruisers unable to participate, and most of them only vaporised rock and ice as the Imperial ships weaved their paths carefully to interpose asteroids between themselves and the Chaos ships as their lance emitters cooled down before a second salvo. Most of the remaining weapons arrays, consisting of plasma projectors, were still out of range, as the ships maneuvered to close up.

As the Chaos squadron closed ranks and shifted to bring their broadsides to bear on the Imperial ships coming from low and behind them, they forgot one foe. Smelting Station Sigma was not about to allow that, and the quad lance batteries mounted on the factory moon's surface ranged upon the exposed bellies of the Khornate ships. Unexpectedly, the silent, dimly lit, innocent-looking factory station lit up with blazing beams of energy, which struck out like vengeful hammer of a god.

The result was terrifying. Already over-strained by the assault of the Imperial squadron, most shields were on the brink of collapse. The firing discipline of the station left a lot to be desired, but they certainly made up by sheer numbers, enthusiasm, and power. The massive fusion reactors that powered the immense mining lasers and smelters of the station were now pouring their entire reserves into the lance emitters, redlining most of them. However, unfortunately for the Chaos ships, the emitters held, belching the fury of the reactors towards them. All over the fleet, shields collapsed, and overpowered beams gutted ship after ship, shattering engines and reactors, and leaving behind burning hulks slowly leaking atmosphere and bodies.

The fury of the station, after it was spent, left behind five hulks slowly drifting towards the mining station's habitat zone. But still, one Murder class cruiser and the Incendium herself, survived, wounded but very much alive. The massive ships left their gutted consorts to their fate, hoping that they would crash on the station, not only crippling it but also unleashing the surviving Khornate marines on the cruisers upon the population. They turned, once again, towards the Imperial ships, and oriented themselves. Immediately, their guns belched again, and crimson beams tore through space and struck at the _Shield_ and her companions. This time, the results were more effective. _Incendium _has targeted Shield for her vengeance, and her lances tore through the weakened shields, goring black wounds down the powerful ship's flanks. The wounds, although superficial, declared one important fact: That the Void shields that protected the Shield had fallen. As the Imperial ships sailed out of the asteroid cloud and their own lances spat fire, tearing apart the single remaining Chaos cruiser, the importance of that fact was displayed.

Gates at the edges of the Chaos warship's armored skirt opened, and spat forth tubes three hundred meters long. Boarding torpedoes, fifteen in total, rushed towards the Imperial battlecruiser, each carrying dozens of Khornate traitor marines and mutant Chaos soldiers.

As the boarding torpedoes struck, the second salvo of the station erupted, tearing the Grand cruiser apart. But it was not important. Even though the criscrossing fields of fire from the Imperial squadron's point defense turrets tore apart six of them, nine boarding torpedoes, including one carrying a Chaos champion, stabbed into Shield's wounded flank, disgorging their contents.

{oOo}

"For how long do you intend to allow us to be led like sheep to the slaughter?" Abaddon hissed, his voice sharp with rage. Lorgar threw him a look of loathing over his shoulder, his eyes watching the distant explosions at the edges of the fleet. The two commanders of Chaos stood at the opulent office Lorgar reserved for himself next to the command bridge of the Planet Killer.

"What do you expect me to do, Abaddon? Catch smoke with my fingers? Trying to catch them amounts to just that." Lorgar growled.

"There are less than one hundred ships out there, Lorgar. You have twenty times their tonnage in cruisers alone. Pursue them. Hit them!"

"And what, Abaddon? What do you propose? The entire system is full of traps. I can't pull my forces together to cover each other, since when I do that, I lose dozens of ships to mines. When I spread out, they rip and tear my flanks like a pack of rats. When I send out squadrons to hunt them down, they pull back and rally around some station, or worse, pull back towards the planets, and the orbital defences slaughter my cruisers. We hit Cadia, or we will be defeated piecemeal all over the system."

"Then what? Will you just wait for me to kill the Imperial High Command and save your bacon, again? Shall I be forced to tow you back to the Eye like that time over Gethsemene, too?"

"Enough." Lorgar's voice told Abaddon that he went too far. "We will hit Cadia. And after Cadia falls, we will destroy the rest of this system, then the rest of the sector, then the Segmentum, all the way to Terra. But first, Cadia must fall. And you better not mess that up, Abaddon. Or I might just decide to finally punish you for your transgressions."

Abaddon grudgingly stepped back, and walked out of the office. One of his fellow traitors, formerly of Luna Wolves, Horus Aximand, fell into step next to him.

Abaddon walked for a while, getting off the bridge, and finally spoke when they are deep in the corridors of the massive war vessel, far away from the ears of any Word Bearers.

"He's getting worse." He said, in a low voice only audible to his fellow captain.

"What do you intend to do?"

{oOo}

The main Chaos force has expanded to a cloud a million kilometres across. The solid core of a thousand Chaos battleships around the Planet Killer held together, but Nurglite grand cruisers, raced ahead, and Khornate and Slaaneshi cruisers spread as they shed small groups. Bundles of Tzeentchian strike cruisers and sorcerer-ships fell back from the main group, preparing to slip into the cracks pounded into the orbital defences of Cadia by the main force.

However, Cadians were not about to leave them alone.

Cadian battleships, devastatingly outnumbered but infinitely better individually than their foes, were hardly the lumbering behemoths Chaos ships were. Thanks to the innovations and work by the Mercurians, discoveries of the Mechanicus, and the work of the Primarchs, ten thousand years since the departure of the Traitor Marines and the Dark Mechanicus to the eye, the technology of the Imperium came a long way.

The battlewagons of Humanity, regardless of their allegiance to the Imperium of Man or the ruinous powers of Chaos, operated on roughly similar principles. In fact, if one were to look at a traitor ship built during the height of the Great Crusade, like the Incendium Gehennae, or an almost brand new product of one of the most modern Forge Worlds, like the Agrippina-built Shield of Benevolence, their general layout and blueprints looked a lot like each other.

In any such comparison, said interested party would note that the designs of the ships resembled the gothic cathedrals that once graced the cities of old Terra. Where, in a cathedral, the Western façade would lay, rose the armoured prow of the ships, under and along the edges of which lay the bow-mounted weapons like the massive Nova cannons and heavy lances. Behind, where in a cathedral the nave and the aisles where worshippers would be seated lay, were the neck, the sides of which, instead of the flying buttresses of a house of worship, were studded with weapons batteries, torpedo launchers, and slabs of armour. Behind the neck, instead of the transepts of the cathedral, the ship's hull flared to the sides, and carried more weapons batteries, landing bays for small craft and fighters, and most of the living spaces of the crew that looked after the massive ship. Behind the transepts, the space that would have been the tastefully decorated eastern face of the cathedral, with stained glass windows of exquisite beauty, carried the massive plasma torches that came from the burning heart of the ship, buried deep in its hull, and propelled it through space in accelerations that imparted forces equalling thousand times the gravitic pull of Humanity's ancient homeworld.

However, these similarities were but superficial, as the interiors and indeed exteriors of the ships were quite different.

Chaos ships, frankly speaking, were relics of a bygone age. Their builders, Dark Mechanicus that fled Mars after the Age of Heresy, carried with it neither the scores of STC patterns discovered since then, nor the innovations and discoveries of Mercurians that strenghtened and vitalized the Imperial tech base. Some of the new technologies did trickle into the profane forges of the Eye, but the flow was slow, in bits of pieces, and lacked the true context, not to mention the overworked Adepts who shared the dogmatic approach of their past Mechanicus associates lacked the ingenuity and appetite for innovation Senshi Mercury bred into her students. Their allegiances gave them various advantages, in better Warp engines, power to their weapons through bound Daemons and the like, but their design philosophy was still the manpower-intensive, non-automated relics that decayed every day, staying in one piece and fighting on through back-breaking and often life threatening labours of countless slaves infesting their bowels.

Imperial ships, in comparison, reaped the fruits of centuries of development, innovation and creativity. Indeed, they carried the basic design characteristics of their anachronistic foes; after all, a lance was a lance, a plasma reactor was a plasma reactor, and an inertial dampener was an inertial dampener; but what they had was better, more automated, faster, cleaner and more powerful. While on a Chaos ship, a hundred slaves pushed and pulled a coolant slug into the breech of a lance, or dozens laboured to load a plasma canister in a plasma caster, automated systems carried the coolant slug in barely a tenth of the time and loaded the same canister in seconds, and while the Chaos-aligned gunners sighted their weapons using archaic sensor suites and half-mechanical, half-electronic contraptions, clad in barely rags in the sweltering heat of the weapons bay, Imperial gunners sat, ensconced in their vac-suits, in their atmosphere-evacuated weapon pods and directed their weapons with the assistance of logic engines painstakingly programmed by the best minds of Mars and Mercury.

In the end in matters of quality, the Imperial battlefleet, and especially the cream of the crop, the best and the brightest of Battlefleet Cadia, were head and shoulders above their foes. However, it was not a simple matter of quality, and even though every Cadian ship was worth ten Chaos ships, there was thirty Chaos ships for every Cadian.

Yet, Lorgar gave the Cadians the perfect opportunity in displaying their superiority, even as he denied them the true result they wished: the scattering of the battleship core.

As the cruisers spread, they came out of the protective umbrella of the Chaos battlefleet's heavy lance batteries. This was an opportunity Admiral Quarren has counted on, and he signalled his fleet. Cadian battleships ignited their engines, and screened by but a handful of escorts, rode out to meet the coming tide.

However, Cadians did not charge right into the teeth of the enemy, as heroes are wont to do. For heroes usually died gloriously, and no Cadian is allowed to die gloriously before he completes his duty, by order of the Commissariat and the Lord Castellan. So, instead of dying gloriously and making Emperor proud (or, if you asked Cadians, making Him roll His eyes at your stupidity) they split into two groups. And these two groups plowed right into the expanding cloud of cruisers, while avoiding action with the solid core of battleships, battlebarges and Dark Mechanicus Arks.

Outclassed and outgunned, the cruisers of the Chaos fleet got the worse end of this deal. The battleships, each outmassing even the largest Chaos cruisers by a factor of five, were as nimble and fleet as the lightest among their number, thanks to the innovations we mentioned above. They tore and rended, and not even the most robust of Nurgle's favored Grand Cruisers had a snowball's chance on Tallarn of surviving within the range of the weapons that studded their flanks. The Nova cannons and boarding torpedoes fired by the Khornate and Nurglite ships were deftly avoided, or shot out of the sky with the point defence turrets of the battleships, and any attempt of swarming one of them by massing up was foiled by getting a full Nova cannon shot to the face from the wingman of the target as the battleships worked in tandem to cover each other. All the while shoals of Imperial piranhas, escorts and destroyers carrying bow mounted lances and similar light weaponry, nipped and tore at the wounded and crippled left at the wake of the titans. The sky was full of stars, and every star was a dying Chaos ship, and their killers.

Yet, the sledgehammer blow aimed at the heart of the Cadian system remained together.

{oOo}

Ursarkar E. Creed, Lord Castellan of Cadia and the Governor-General of the Cadian System, rolled his cigar between his teeth as he examined the huge holotank in the middle of the Cadian High Command War Room. Things were getting worrying. The main body of the Chaos fleet made no move to rescue the beleaugered cruisers from the talons of the Imperial battlefleet. His and Admiral Quarren's expectation was that they would chase after the Cadian battleships to force a confrontation, but contrary to their expectations, whoever the commander was on the other side (Creed expected Abaddon, as the man had displayed his capabilities in the fiasco of the Gothic War) managed to see through their ruse and refused to rise to the bait.

"Now they decide to get smart." He grumbled.

{oOo}

"You will not scatter!" Abaddon's voice was harsh and sharp as he commanded the captains of the battleship group. "Not even the entire Battlefleet Solar appears and drives right through us. Scatter, and we lose."

Aximand scratched his chin as he watched Abaddon cut the channel and lean back in his chair. "What will you tell Lorgar if he notices you overrode his orders?"

"Nothing." Abaddon smirked. "He won't dare do anything. He would be preening in reflected glory. We stay together, and this force will smash Cadia's defences apart like glass. After that happens, he won't dare to do anything that would compromise his glory. So he will play along."

"Wouldn't that make him resent you more?"

"Horus, that man resents me more than he resents the Emperor already. Believe me, if he can see a way of removing me without hurting himself, he would do it already. Nothing I do would make it any worse." Abaddon said as he rose and walked out of the room.

"Your funeral." Horus Aximand shook his head, as he fell into step behind the former First Captain of Luna Wolves.

{oOo}

Admiral Quarren's hands clasped the armrests of his command chair as his flagship tore apart a Chaos grand cruiser. He can see the Chaos armada off his ship's starboard side at his plot, but the sporadic lance fire coming his way from them was ineffective. What is worrying was their continuing charge headlong, with no groups breaking off to pursue him. Unless something changed soon, Cadia was doomed.

Suddenly, his operations officer piped up from her station.

"Admiral, I read breaches in the rear of the Chaos fleet."

He turned towards the young woman wearing a Commander's uniform. She looked up to meet his eyes.

"Report."

"Warp transits, sir. Multiple- Correction. Webway portals. I am reading multiple webway portals at the wake of the Chaos fleet."

"Identification."

"Tentative, sir. Eldar patterns. Multiple capital-class signatures. IFF challenge transmitting."

The seconds that took the lightspeed message to the Eldar only served to increase the tension on the flag bridge of Malleus Imperialis. However, as the Eldar ships established their formations and directed their bows towards the rear of the Chaos fleet, the communications yeoman finally perked up and passed a data note to the comms officer.

"Challenge acknowledged, sir!" The young man said, punching a few buttons on his console. "Playing message."

The viewscreen at the forward bulkhead flickered and displayed a long, slim face with pointed ears and dark eyes. It was a familiar face, and Admiral Quarren released a breath he did not realize he was holding.

"To the commander of Battlefleet Cadia, this is Farseer Eldrad Uthran. Battlefleet Ulthwe is here to assist. Where do you need us?"

Agnus Quarren's face scretched in a predatory grin, and he signalled his comms officer to record.

"Farseer, I can't even begin to tell you how good it is to see you. We need the main bulk of the Chaos fleet dispersed, so that they do not hit Cadia's defences in a massed attack. My forces will be killing acceleration and turning in to hit their flanks. I would appreciate if you can hit their rear and try to tear off a chunk. We are expecting an Astartes battlegroup, and if we can delay landings until they arrive, it would make life easier for all of us. Message ends." He sat back. "Transmit."

"Now we are in business."

{oOo}

AN: And here is Part 2, with some new content.


	3. Interlude I

{oOo}

Angron tiredly dropped his bulk on a broken piece of masonry, from a wall knocked down by the fire of Cadian Leman Russ tanks that were assisting his Marines in the cleaning of Plague Zombies.

The building crumbling behind him was once a school. Angron and World Eaters, along with the troops from the Cadian 152nd, just finished cleaning up the bloated, walking corpses that spilled from it to the streets. Bolter fire, lasguns, bayonets and chainswords tore through the moaning, screaming horde of small shapes.

Angron felt sick.

His foot absently pushed the half-toppled swing set, crushed under the tracks of some machine or other, making the swings creak.

He was bone weary. He felt drained. Fighting, battle was Angron's greatest joy, yet there was no joy in this kind of fighting. Not because the lack of challenge. But...

The massive Primarch swallowed bile rising to his throat. He half turned towards the hand dropping on his shoulder plate, expecting to see Kharn, but the hand was too light.

Aquila was standing there. The "Senshi Cadia", the manifestation of the Cadian spirit, certainly looked the part. She was a tallish woman, with short, military cut hair, distinctive violet eyes of her home planet, clad in military fatigues and an officer's greatcoat. One of her eyes were covered with an eyepatch, and her cheek and side of her mouth was bisected by a scar. Her expression was solemn. She held out a datapad.

"Chaos attacked Cadia. Here are the details."

Kharn approached from around the building as Angron took the datapad from the Senshi and perused it.

"Lord Castellan Creed?" He muttered questioningly. Kharn noted the subdued, low tone of his normally boisterous Lord. This worried him more than his rages, more than his usual strangeness.

"Yes." Aquila answered. "Some kind of sneak attack by traitor regiments, it seems. Governor General is dead, along with most of High Command, and the remaining generals elected Colonel Creed to become the new commander of the Cadian forces."

"I remember Creed, my lord." Kharn piped from the side. "Your brother, Lord Guilliman, talked about him. I think they met in the Yulan Campaign, against the orks. Good tactician, a solid commander, if I remember correctly."

"Much more than that." Aquila countered with a smirk on her normally stoic face. "Colonel Creed is probably one of the craftiest soldiers I have ever met. If he is in command of Cadia due to the actions of Chaos, the idiots just shot themselves in the foot, for they are in for a beating."

Angron was still subdued, but he straightened, and a dangerous glint appeared in his eyes. "So they can hold?"

"Oh, sure as hell they can hold." was Aquila's answer. She then added, in a more serious tone, "I don't know how long, though. This sounds big, and most of our forces are scattered around the Sector, pissing on all these fires."

Angron rose with a grunt. He looked revitalized. "As long as they hold out long enough for us to get there, and save us some Nurglite necks to wring, I'd be happy." He then walked off, yelling at the Captains of World Eaters nearby to gather the troops. Aquila shot a puzzled look at Kharn. The Captain of the 8th Company smiled grimly.

"Most people find the fascination of children with Lord Angron strange indeed," he said. "Some even think I was mad to help with that cartoon, and risk pissing him off. What they don't know, is that Angron loved it. I don't know anyone else who likes children as much as him, and I count the Princess among my acquaintances, so that should tell you something. He also hates when children get hurt, and even worse when he can't do anything about it. And now he can do something about it."

{oOo}


End file.
